


Pandora's Box

by rabbitsintheclouds



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anarchism, Angst, Deep dive into solitary confinement, Depersonalization, Derealization, Dream Angst, Drug Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Ender!Dream, Flashbacks, Gen, Hallucinations, He/They pronouns for Sam, Immortality, Implied Non-Human Dream, Imprisonment, Introspection, Memory Corruption, Memory Loss, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Human Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), OOC by nature, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Overdose, Pandora's Vault, Potion abuse, Prison, Psychological Trauma, Rated For Violence, Self-Harm, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, and what constitutes evil, but it sucks, graphic depictions of self-harm, grey morality, many characters not tagged, mental deterioration, no respawn, sort of god!Dream, the exploration of what makes a person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28012659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitsintheclouds/pseuds/rabbitsintheclouds
Summary: "Punz?" His voice is so much smaller than it should be."You should've paid me more, Dream."When he looks up, it's not just Punz but a gathered audience behind him, a colorful crowd of impassive gazes, judgement cast in the tired set of their eyes, the glint of their armor and weapons. That weary wartorn hunch to all of their shoulders. Every one of them huddled in close, staring, waiting."You can't kill me." Dream whispers it to the jury, a final defense."Yeah, but it doesn't matter does it? Just so long as it hurts."---ORDream is a delusional god with a person complex, and getting locked in his own prison creates less of a solution and more of a problem.--aka: an exploration of forced isolation, amnesia, and the destructive forces of cyclical fate and destiny.
Comments: 102
Kudos: 349





	1. Far

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder; 
> 
> These are characters ripped straight from that blockmen game with all the wars, this is fiction and holds no portrayal or reflection of anyone in real life.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy clings to his last hope in the form of a compass and a party. 
> 
> Dream decides Tommy won't have either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts of Pandora's Vault and God!Dream made my dumbass brain go brrr-- 
> 
> Alright bear with me, the first few chapters of this are going to be confusing; I watched Bly Manor and shit and decided fuck it, flashbacks and weird non-linear storytelling let's goooo
> 
> So we start with the beach party and quickly bump back to the present (for the most part) in chapter four.
> 
> This is a blend of a god!dream and canon divergence, and it won't exactly be a one to one Minecraft ratio for world mechanics, we do some offroading, and some suspension of disbelief may be somewhat required but that's fine.
> 
> This starts to get into all sorts of things, like the Eggpire, Quackity's Las Vegas, Sam's Capitalism Arc, nukes, gods and immortality and changing fate, and of course a look into the different forms of anarchism with Techno and Phil (and Niki!). If there's an established character on the Dream SMP trust me they're most likely showing up in here. 
> 
> If you have a question feel free to ask and I might have an answer :)

There's something quietly peaceful that settles over Dream's mind as he listens to Tommy talk and talk and _talk_ about his little beach party. 

All excited, swinging his arms in wide, animated gestures the kid pushes and shoves and crafts decorations; tables from logs and chairs from stumps sunk in the sand, all slightly askew. Stubbornly chaotic even as Ghostbur trails behind, shifting every object until it seems perfect, his voice less tremulous, richer, _steady_ as he echoes Tommy's sentiments.

The kid's more alive than he's been since he was exiled. 

A warmth in his voice, that familiar spark that had nearly been snuffed out returning to a steady flame. Defiance latched on to a fantasy. 

He watches from the slope that overlooks the beach. Down below, Ghostbur struggles to drag the heavy object in his translucent grip, Tommy cursing as he's forced to shoulder most of the weight on the other end. They fall, the wood plank hitting the sand with a thump. 

Laughter fills the air. 

A relic of the original L'manberg living on in the two people who couldn't be further from its legacy. 

He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, chin dipping as his eyes narrow behind the safety of his mask. 

Tommy yells something his way. He smiles, never really needing to, and not always wanting to, but he does it anyways as he takes sliding steps down the dune. 

It was easier to pretend that way. 

By the time the sun starts to sink lower, the beach is lit with fancy torches, inviting and warm despite the vacant state of it, feeling liminal and only ever temporary. 

He's played his part, and as he stands shoulder to shoulder with Tommy, watching the sun crawl towards the blue line of the horizon, his face is blank behind the mask. Emptier than even the dead eye smile etched on the front. 

"Since I can't go to L'manberg, I can give the invitations to Ghostbur and he'll--" there's a rushed excitement in Tommy's words, making him stumble breathlessly fast through the sentence, "He'll give them out to everyone--" 

Blue eyes darting to the ground and then up towards him, then back again, Tommy's heel sinks in the sand with a twisting kick, "right?" 

He looks over, eyes dead, lips flattened into a harsh line, always out of sight and out of mind. Despite that, his tone of voice remains only ever friendly, "Yeah, that should work." 

Tommy stares at him a moment longer, thumbing at the pulse of some other phrase and Dream watches the kid open his mouth, shut it with a click and then look increasingly frustrated. 

Eyes skate away again, the spark of a glare manifesting, dark circles catching less light as Tommy tilts his head down until blond curls tumble over his forehead. 

Looking up with the taunt stance of a flinch at the ready, Tommy mumbles, "thank you." 

It's such a quiet thing and his lips tug up into a smile on one side. Still, it's not enough. 

He tilts his head, genuine confusion coming easily, "sorry, what was that?" 

Tommy grimaces, crossing his arms, eyes back on the water. A common defense mechanism from the kid, reflecting a hastily constructed sense of standoffishness, "I said 'thank you', you fuckin' hard of hearing or something, _Dream_?" 

He laughs. 

"You're welcome, _Tommy_." He drops his voice comically at the end, a mirthful mockery of the kid. 

Success comes in the shape of a sweeping smile across Tommy's face, a snort of laughter as blue eyes roll and he looks away again.

It's another coffin nail hammered into the box shaped sense of camaraderie between them. 

He gives a nod, a small audible hum under his breath as he looks out to the blue expanse just the same. 

Like a dog given the order to stop heeling, Tommy scrambles into action, leaving his side with curses back on his tongue as he runs up to the tent, kicking up clouds of sand the whole way, "Ghostbur!" A sigh of frustration, a loud tsk, and the kid forges on, "Where the fuck's that dickhead gone now..." 

-

By the time he makes to leave, the sun's already tucked below the sea, the stars flickering across the expanse of the night sky like distant echoes to the endless burn of the torches now lining the shore. 

Tommy is still sitting there on the shore, waves lapping at his tattered shoes. A track plays on the jukebox, filtering down the hill with it's distant, melancholic tune.

It was moments like this that he was reminded of who Tommy really was, just a kid. Small and uncaring for the creatures that wandered the night. As if he's made safe by the very idea that he won't be so alone even if it's just for one day. 

And maybe the kid was right. 

If fearlessness could make someone invincible, then Tommy would be untouchable.

But there is a stark contrast to the image of the kid willing to scream in his face and swing a sword at him versus the figure huddled on the beach, knees drawn up to his chest. 

"They'll come. I built the bridge, they don't--" Tommy cuts off with a shake of his head before he keeps talking down to something in his hand, "there's no excuse now … Surely not."

The slow tumbling notes of music fill the silence. 

There's _something_ in Tommy's hands, his mind warns like a call to danger. And it's certainly not the invites he'd watched the kid press so eagerly into Ghostbur's hands, the spirit giving a mock salute before heading off. 

He walks on silent steps, the irritated spectre cast in the long fractured shadows of Tommy's silhouette as he moves along the top of the hill until he has a better line of sight.

It's glowing softly with an enchantment, round and palm sized. Tommy lets his hand fall, knuckles hitting the sand and a red needle spins a moment before settling to point across the sea. 

He holds back a twisted scoff behind bared teeth, fingers folding into fists at his sides. Slow and automatic, all before he can force them to smooth out, iron out the rankled form of some bent and crooked sense of betrayal before it grows out of control.

For a fleeting second of something _pitying_ and stupid, he'd felt that incessant pang of wayward sympathy chomp at his heels until he seriously considered letting the kid have his party. 

The glint of fire light in the compass's glass taunts him. 

It's clear now. 

It was never enough to simply convince Tommy. That no matter how many times he claimed that Tubbo held no remorse, claimed that he left his compass in a chest, claimed that he said L'Manberg was better off without such a _liability_ \-- no matter how close he pushed Tommy to the edge he'd always dance back from it, compass in hand. 

It would never be enough. 

No, not when Tubbo walked around with one to match, eyes glued to the needle, watching where it pointed with a look in his eyes that's always too conflicted.

It's the same look Tommy casts across the water. 

It's the look of someone who doesn't understand.

L'Manberg could never have a _Tommy._

It would never again have it's true spark of rebellion, it's thirst for freedom, it's unwavering strength and defiance in the shape of a boy too fearless for his own good.

Just as it would never again have a Wilbur Soot.

And it all would work _perfectly_.

Because he'd done his part, _right?_

Sacrifices had to be made and unruly pawns dealt with, if there was ever going to be any sense of control. Any semblance of _peace_.

And he befriended them both, filling that hollowed out shape of a person between them because it was the least he could do after they'd come to see reason, and maybe it was also amusing. Regardless of the motive, it was better this way.

And he was their friend. 

He was Tommy's _friend._

And for what? 

Time wasted on some childish god-damned game of trying to pretend like he actually cared, like he wanted anything but to see L'Manberg scattered into ashes and dust, destroyed beyond recognition. He'd do just about anything to wipe it off the map, even go so far as to play along, playing the role so well that for a frightening moment he'd considered actually leaving it alone. Like somehow he'd come to foster a sense of ally ship in a chess game that's dragged out for too long? As if he'd ever have the audacity to let himself lose?

His nails dig into his palms, a quake running up both arms. 

At this rate, he doesn't think he'll be able to watch the nation fall until the damn near end of the world.

His thoughts become cyclical, a deluge of the same angry currents until they grow sour and bitter.

No, no... All of it, all the stupid obsessions, the discs, the compasses, the clinging to some dead idea, it's about what he expected from a couple of children.

Tubbo clinging to someone who would sooner defy everything and everyone all for two discs. 

And in exile Tommy clung back, so desperately stubborn he'd stay up all night waiting for something that will never happen.

If Tubbo visits, any illusion of control is over.

Dream turns away, manifesting Nightmare in a shimmer of purple light, the axe glinting like the misshapen fang of a wolf smiling in the dark.

The notes from the jukebox play through the night. 

He has a ghost to hunt. 

As he walks away, he doesn't see Tommy look back, eyes searching the shadows beyond the flickering torch lights.

_"Dream?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen I know it seems like Tommy angst but I swear it's really not, like this green dude is not going to have a fun time as things fall apart and we dig into the meat and bones of solitary confinement's effects among other things. 
> 
> These first few chapters with Tommy are important mostly because Pandora's Vault was designed with Tommy's exile in mind so parallels in shit y'know-- its all establishing some stuff an important callback if you will
> 
> !!-please bully me in the comments, give me the motivation and spite to continue-!!
> 
> **If you see the tags or the summary change as chapters update, don't worry about it, I'm just indecisive and tryna figure shit out**


	2. This Blade Shouts "Ruin!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream knows ghosts can't die, but memories can. 
> 
> Remembering is always the problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a reference to the angel Cassiel and his blade that dripped lightning and slayed kings.
> 
> Trigger Warning: Violence against a minor, gore, death, gaslighting, manipulation

Ghostbur disappears before the spirit can even shut the door to his sewer home. A netherite axe cleaving through him with hardly a sound apart from a short-lived whistle against the air. The spectre's eyes don't even have time to widen, simply one moment in the doorway, the next gone.

He dismisses the axe before the items left behind can clatter against the cobblestone. 

They all have an odd flimsy quality to them, as if they eroded from reality every second Ghostbur held them in his inventory.

Upon a quick glance, he sees there's too much blue, easily being a hundred of those smooth stones the ghost loved to offer to all his friends. Dream nudges at one with the toe of his boot. 

_Here, have some blue, Dream._

Everytime the ghost handed him blue, the translucent stone only shifted closer to navy, and then a blueblack so dark it resembled obsidian, and from there it refused to change color no matter how long he held it. 

It was the same for every stone after. Again and again, he hardly knows why he bothers with them anymore. 

So when he crouches down and sweeps the stones aside, he pays no mind to the fact each one instantly bleeds a darker shade of blue. 

Beneath the pile lies a stack of photographs. Pictures of L'Manberg and her surrounding territories, other corners of the little world, of the people who lived there, of friends and allies, _family_ , and so unlike the empty one's Dream saw stitched into the canvas sides of Tommy's tent. 

He sifts through vials of ink, pens, and journals, a book titled _Things I Remember_.

Nothing. 

He searches the ghost's home.

Nothing. 

He steps back out with a calmness like the early roll of storm clouds, gently closing the door until it clicks shut behind him. Now all that's left is to stare down at the items left behind once more. Crouching down on his haunches, elbows resting on his knees, his fingers twitch before curling and then uncurling, repeating the gesture. 

_Nothing._

The fire of every torch snuffs out like a final breath. 

It's the only warning as the largest items go flying into the cobblestone wall on the tail end of a shout, some of the stones shattering under the force. 

Paper tears, the sound of objects splashing into the water echoes too loud. Objects scraping stone, clattering and breaking and rattling, he swipes at every single one, and if not for the protection of gloves, his fingertips and knuckles would be split bloody and messy against the rough corners of the cobble stone, a lasting red testament to his momentary lapse of restraint.

Shoulders heaving, hunched over like an animal, Dream stares into the immediate nothing of absolute darkness. Teeth bared on open mouthed pants, they spread across his own lips and cheeks, hot air trapped momentarily behind the curve of his mask. 

He stands, stepping without care as something crunches under heel. Fists swinging at his sides, his back straight, each step eats up a length of darkness along the sewer's path with an unnatural silence, like the very sounds themselves were too afraid to echo.

As far as the darkest depths of it are concerned, they should be.

Somewhere not too far away, a ghost wakes in the rubble beneath the heart of L'Manberg, looking down at its translucent hands, grabbing at its chest. Reaching for something that it can't remember and drawing breaths that it can never have. 

-

The surface is bright, lit by the copious amounts of torches, lanterns, and other fixtures strewn about in a windingly logical fashion. The enchantment of his mask allows him to adjust to the sudden onslaught of light without pause. 

Hands shoved deep in his pockets, any trace of armor remains dismissed now, Dream's heels hitting the wooden path with dull, deliberate thuds. 

Following the laws of the land of course, because it was only right. 

Close to the community house's bright, glass paneled allure, he finds Tubbo talking with Ranboo.

His steps quiet on instinct, the sight of the black and white figure registering as a threat somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach, the base of his brain, until the hair at the nape of his neck stands on end.

Ranboo is the first to turn his head, just enough for his crown to glint in the warm light, a red eye staring him down. He stops in his tracks, waiting, watching, and taking note of the way the kid's tail goes from a wide swing to a tight flick, sharp ears pinning back ever so slightly. 

He isn't here for him, but looking him in the eye sets him on edge regardless. Pricking and clawing harder at that space at the back of his skull and the roots of his teeth, it makes his gums itch. 

With a practiced ease, he pretends it's nothing, molars separating from their bone crushing crunch until he's able to do the same greeting he always does, a friendly palm raised, a soft cordial, _hello_.

Tubbo jumps, whipping around, hand brought to his chest, "D-Dream--" the president's eyes dart to Ranboo but he remains impassive. "How long have you been standing there?" 

He tilts his head, studying the president's eyes, always a shade of blue brighter than Tommy's, Tubbo more enthusiastic in general, like a loyal dog lighting up when it spots its owner. 

"Not long." He says it on a grin hooked too high on one side, it bleeds into his voice when he continues, "why, are you trying to hide something from me?" 

It's spoken like a joke, it reads like a threat. 

"No, no--" The president laughs, something just shy of nervous as he gestures to Ranboo and then to the lanterns hanging in the air above them, drifting in small swaying movements but never straying, "just showing Ranboo the lanterns Wil- _Ghostbur's_ put up." 

He tilts his head back as if to admire the handiwork a moment, speaking like he's discussing the weather, all plain and boring, "they're nice." 

"How's--" Trailing off, guilt flashes in Tubbo's eyes, a brilliant, fleeting thing like the sun's reflection in the ocean waves, a tug at the corner of his lips, "How's Tommy?" 

The night air crackles, light seeming to bend around the sudden tension, and his lip curls, eyeteeth glinting in an unseen threat. 

Ranboo shuffles, not so much as putting himself between Tubbo and danger, but with one foot angled in front of the other, he looks ready to jump in front of the shorter kid, "Dream…" a black palm raised, trying to calm a situation he shouldn't even be apart of, _hovering_ like a gnat.

He bites back the aggression threatening to crawl its way out of his throat, leveling it out with a monotone drawl. "I need to speak with Tubbo actually… _alone_." 

Conceding, Ranboo gives a tiny bow. His mismatched eyes meet Tubbo's own and something passes between them before the black and white figure slinks off. 

The ensuing silence is loud. 

Tubbo takes half a step forward, question scrawled on his brow.

Dream watches. Uncertainty, fear, and a contained sort of despair crawl across the president's features. Tubbo pulling the compass out of his pocket and cupping it in both hands, he watches the needle swing steady, shoulders jumping with fast, frantic breaths before he looks up. 

"Dream?" 

He'd heard the same flavor of fear drip from Tubbo's voice once before, a different name falling from his tongue. 

And no, he's not--  
That's not--

_He's not Schlatt._

He rushes to smooth out his posture, hands up and placating, switched from the flashing danger of a black suit and ram horns in Tubbo's mind to the friendly shape of soft greens and open palms. 

Managing a comforting smile that goes unseen, it remains just on the edge of too sharp. Still, it's honey slick, the comforting notes bleed smooth into his voice, "Tommy's fine, he's fine." 

He moves forward, placing a hand on Tubbo's shoulder, gentle and reassuring even when every dangerous impulse in him bays for that compass to be smashed to pieces. 

Tubbo visibly relaxes, both hands cradling the compass a moment, shoulders bent, "I thought--" he sniffs, following it up with a sigh, "for a moment I…"

Trailing off, Tubbo pockets the compass. 

There's a sweeping change in composure then, a darker glint to Tubbo's eyes as he finally tilts his chin up, eyes rung red with tears that never fell. An unspoken accusation.

"I wouldn't kill him." 

Tubbo's eyes widen, "No, I wasn't-- I-" hands up and gesturing in the air, he tries to correct the misunderstanding and it's almost amusing as the president gathers smoother words. "I know you wouldn't. Even after everything." 

Eyes narrowing ever so slightly, he becomes the cat satisfied by its quarry. He removes his hand, letting Tubbo take a step back, the president wringing his wrist as he does so, more words spilling out to hit the warm night air.

"I'm more worried Tommy will do _something_..." Tubbo looks at his shoes, blonde hair falling over the length of his forehead. 

A bursting bubble of lava echoes in Dream's ears. The feeling of someone squirming under the sole of his boot, the cringe worthy sound of nails scratching and splitting on stone, the heaving sigh of defeat, _it's never my time to die._

"To Tommy." Dream finishes, voice neutral. 

The chirp of crickets fills the space between them, Tubbo personally not risking the utterance of the idea into reality. 

"I do need to talk to you about something." He rocks back on his heels, "about, well- about Tommy. It's something important." 

And Tubbo looks at him with the sort of hopeful gleam that he will take no small satisfaction in seeing snuffed out. 

He doesn't give the president room to refuse, walking past him and knowing he'll hear the shorter strides follow. 

He's not disappointed. 

-

"What's this about then?" Tubbo says as he shuts the door behind them, his voice remaining only ever an aggravating hopeful, something changed between the then and the now, apart from when he'd stood on that wall and chose his nation over everything else. "You've thought about letting him come back to visit haven't you?" 

The words and their meaning scratch at his ears and Dream grimaces without comment. 

Already moving across the office, his fingers trail along the edge of the desk that once belonged to a far more imposing figure, something genuinely dangerous. Sifting through the stacks of paper, he sees a bunch of yellowed parchment with tattered uneven edges, spots of ink and frantic, excited script. 

There aren't even any directions on it beyond a hastily drawn nether portal, what looks like a bridge next to it, everything labeled to explain the crude map. It's enough to get there, sure, but not enough to go on without the use of the nether. 

A smiley face drawn by Tommy's chicken scratch of a name sits at the bottom of it.

Picking up one between his pointer and middle finger, he holds it up to the light. "Actually, I'm here about this." 

"Oh right, he mentioned you in it." Tubbo narrows his eyes a tick, walking forward a few paces until he's on the opposite side of the desk, hand gesturing as he talks, "says you're gonna let him throw a beach party. That you authorized it." Tubbo goes on, "I think it's a great idea--"

"Burn them." 

"W-what?" Tubbo steps back, eyes wide. 

He keeps holding it out, arm steady. 

Brow pinching harder, a spark leaps to life in those blue eyes. 

"You, you--" Tubbo's fists clench at his side, a finger sweeping up to jab towards his chest, not grabbing for the paper like he _should_. "You green bastard, you can't do that to him!" 

He sounds too much like Tommy. 

" _Can't I?"_ Anger loosens his tongue, the words harsh as he shakes the invitation in the air, thinking, _grab it, grab it or else._

"No!" Tubbo shouts, cutting a hand through the air, "no, you _can't_." Arm sweeping out to the side now, it's a jerky and graceless gesture, the movement of a frustrated teen, "I've already handed out the invites!" 

He laughs, full and dark, "well…" he trails off, the paper falling to the desk. "That's unfortunate." 

He gets a full body flinch, something fleetingly inconsistent on Tubbo's face, an involuntary step back and then another. Lips slightly parted, a forearm comes up like the world's worst makeshift shield. "Why?" 

It's small, so unsure, so much so that Dream let's Tubbo try again. 

" _Why?_ You told me he was a liability and I believed it was what's best for L'Manberg, but now I'm…" Tubbo's voice falls to a dark whisper, regret laced like fine embroidery in the syllables. "Now I'm not so sure."

"It's not about Tommy. Can't you see that?" He moves around the edge of the desk looming, mask disguising the twisted snarl to his lips as he spits the lie. "It's about helping L'Manberg become the nation it was meant to be." 

He has half a mind to wonder when he started to think that way, L'Manberg gone from pest to begrudgingly promising. Perhaps he figured siding with the cockroach was better than wasting poison on it. Time better spent coaxing it out from under the cabinets so it'd be easier to squash.

Tubbo remains unconvinced. 

"It's about building it better," He smoothes over, voice winding and full of false praise. "Under better leadership. No more liabilities. Tommy was always blowing things up, causing problems. You have to admit things look a lot better with him gone." 

"But, why--" Tubbo barks back, "why do you care so much?" 

Tubbo runs a hand though his hair, a single hysterical laugh. "You... you said it yourself, L'Manberg can be independent. So, why do you care about our 'liabilities'?" 

The resistance he meets is not what he wants. 

So, he backtracks, chin dipping as his shoulders rise and fall on harsher breaths that scrape the air trapped under his mask. "Because you're not free." 

Tubbo opens his mouth, but he cuts him off pointing outside with a harsh finality, each word said with gravity and emphasis. 

"Tomorrow morning-- _tomorrow morning_ you're going to go out there, and you're going to tell them--" his voice inches up to just below a shout, twisted and warped, disdain like a hidden melody. "You're going to tell them that the _whole_ thing is off. That Tommy didn't write these, that it was a prank, that he rescheduled for thirty years from now--"

He cuts himself off, raising both hands in a pinched gesture before bowing slightly, words cutting. "I _don't_ care. So long as _no one_ goes." 

"You're being irrational." Tubbo counters, staring up at him, voice wavering too much for someone with a glare like that. "You know I don't have the power to actually stop anyone."

And that was the problem, wasn't it? 

He steps back, looking the president up and down like how someone sizes up a particularly feisty squirrel. It's not like he hadn't already considered that, the community nether portal long destroyed on the L'manberg side, but it didn't matter if they repaired it. No one would be finding Tommy's lonely little island even _if _Tubbo decided to convince everyone of nothing. He'd make sure of that.__

____

This is about more than just that formality. This isn't about that _if_. 

____

His eyes catch sight of Tubbo's hand at his pocket, the edge of the enchanted compass glinting purple between pale fingers, red needle wobbling. That red needle the only thing bridging the gap between Tommy and everyone else. It stands glaring and bright, just a small sliver of painted magnetized metal in a glass case.

It had to be destroyed. 

____

That bleeding red of the needle shakes and shudders in his vision.

____

Blinking it away, he's not there. No longer in the here nor the now.

____

He's in front of the church, that church he'd helped build on land that shouldn't even be holy, almost more joke than anything, like a middle finger to the idea that sanctified ground existed in a world absent of a benevolent deity's caring gaze. He stands there in the shape of deliverance, blood boiling, teeth gnashing as Sapnap gets in his face, staring down the two beady black eyes of a permanent smile.

____

And the memory plays out like a record scratched and missing too many notes, skipping as it sees fit.

____

"You're being a tyrant, dude."

____

He keeps his axe leveled at Quackity's throat, ignoring Sapnap's presence even as the accusation rips through him. He doesn't waver, doesn't flinch, doesn't give a millimeter. Grip steady and righteous.

____

A tyrant wouldn't ensure that no one got hurt by stupid, impulsive actions.

____

"What're you gonna do, Dream?" Sapnap gets dangerously close, teeth flashing, voice hoarse with the strangle of a shout. "What the fuck _can_ you do?"

____

"We could kill all of you."

____

We, because it was never just him. That's not how it worked, it couldn't.

____

"Do it then!" Sapnap shouts, not backing down.

____

He looks down his nose, all everyone sees is a subtle tilt back of his mask.

____

Quackity speaks, throat bobbing against the axe blade, an unrelenting confidence in his eyes. "First you make George the king and then you give the crown back to Eret, who _you_ said betrayed you. And then you blow up over a protest--"

____

He inches the blade up higher, forcing Quackity's chin up.

____

Acting like a man who's not hovering a hairsbreadth from death, Quackity let's out a patronizing laugh. "Do you even know what the fuck you're doing anymore?"

____

"It was a threat. You committed an act of terror."

____

"It was a _protest_."

____

He presses the edge of the axe into Quackity's throat hard enough to draw blood.

____

"You're acting insane." George steps closer, sword drawn at the ready.

____

Eret puts a hand on the hilt of their own sword, dark frames flashing on their face as they step forward, the puppet king for the pretend throne so eager to defend it.

____

Pushing George back, placing himself between his friend and a potential threat, Sapnap whips back around, rounding on all of them with a simmering rage.

____

"You keep saying you don't care about anything-" Sapnap's approach is stopped by a sword drawn and leveled with his chest, he continues nonetheless until the sharp tip presses into his sternum. Lingering there, he shouts around Eret's form. "So then why the fuck do you keep getting involved?"

____

He tightens his grip on the axe haft.

____

After a long stretch of nothing but haunting tension, Dream let's the axe fall. A final warning in the form of a weeping red line on Quackity's neck.

____

Eret and the rest of the knights stand down, letting the rebels gather their _leader_.

____

"Come on." Sapnap grabs Quackity's arm, tugging him along. The rest of the El Rapids rebels retreating with them.

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George lingers and Dream opens his mouth, but he knows-- he remembers how he couldn't manage a single word. From his friend's perspective it would look like he's simply staring, impassive, uncaring, but his face is twisted into more confliction than he knows how to handle, lips moving, tongue stuck. And that's the point of a mask isn't it? 

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Nightmare glints in his gloved hand, the very edge of it darkened with the hint of drawn blood.

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It coalesces along the sharp half crescent of the blade, dropping to the grass without a sound.

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George's eyes track it before he shakes his head and turns away, swiping the back of his hand across his face with a derisive sniff, pushing up those ridiculous white goggles in the process.

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"They'll be back."

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Eret's lie brings no comfort.

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He shrugs off the comforting hand, a deep disdain for the sting it leaves behind that only makes him walk away faster.

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He leaves alone, stares and whispers trailing after him, haunting the corners of his mind.

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He had to. _He had to_.

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He loses them, but he had to.

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His job was to protect them, he'd never considered how far he'd fed himself that lie. He had to.

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He has to.

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And the blue doesn't work, it doesn't fucking work. That ghost scammed him, he fucking lied, and now there's stacks of useless black rocks littered around the basement of a community house that's now too big, too empty.

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He manifests a blade swinging it across the photos pinned fondly on the wall, listens to the framed ones shatter, the loose ones tear and rip, his face scratched out in every one. Familiar faces beside his own chopped down one by one, until he can't convince himself to care about any of them at all.

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He swings again and again, the walls of something shaped like the winding halls of his own mind scored so deep with blade marks they creak and the rocks only ever increase in volume until all he sees is their blueblack.

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Left only to spin in place, again and again, it's the same four walls he sees, dark and yawning, as above and so below.

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He shouldn't be here. He swings the sword with a singing arc through the air, sparks flash as it meets obsidian-- 

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The world tilts with a click, click, click, like the strike of flint and stone, the sweet smell of nitroglycerin TNT, the taste of ash in his mouth. ~~He already did this.~~. 

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He blinks and stumbles back into the cradle of what is supposed to be the present. 

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Blade point aimed at the wood floor, the walls plain and illuminated once more; safe. Shoulders heaving, hair falling over the edge of his mask he watches Tubbo stumble back. 

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One hand flailing to catch any solid surface, the other grips the red spilling from his throat and Tubbo doesn't seem to realize he can no longer speak, lips trying to quake around some phrase or another. 

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He looks on, sword gone before a drop of blood ever hits the floor. Red flecks his mask, spilt harsh and dark against the green of his clothes. 

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Tubbo collapses, gurgles twisted, wet and desperate, words never forming past the incessant froth of blood down his windpipe. Trying so desperately to swallow at the sensation before he starts to aspirate, but only causing more pain in a relentless cycle of fruitless gulps.

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Tears track down the president's cheeks and he finally looks like what he really is. A kid in a suit, too big to ever fill.

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Then he's crawling, red dragging behind him in great smeared swathes that stain the light wood.

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Fingers reaching and breaths harsher than shallow gasps.

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The chest he's trying to get to still so far away.

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He steps easily in front of Tubbo's path.

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The kid's eyes go wide, his hands and feet working to scoot and scramble away, back bumping up against a wall until he's left trying to inch up the length of it only to collapse under his own weight.

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Staring up with glazed eyes and half hearted swallows, Dream's shadow falls across him, and all that's left of the kid are the hollow whimpers of a kicked dog.

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He crouches down in front of him.

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Tubbo's head starts to lull forward, eyes rolling as blood loss begins to choke his brain, hand falling away from his neck.

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That's his cue.

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There's a detached mechanical effort to his movements as he pushes Tubbo's head back up, grabbing the bottom of the kid's jaw with one hand, a god apple manifesting in the other. He shoves it against Tubbo's lips pulling a limp jaw down with an unkind grip, forcing him to chew off a piece.

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The second it hits Tubbo's tongue, it does it's job, the rest of it dissolving in a dissipation of warm light that starts to manifest around the gaping wound of his throat.

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It's clinical, safe, _distant_. Less of a risk than healing him by any other means. Already stepping so far out of cosmic line that he can feel the disgruntled, vengeful weight of the universe bear down on him. Old lectures from ancient voices buzzing like gnats in his ears, but they don't ring louder than the heavy notes of static, of some sort of slick, slippery deja vu.

There's something uncannily familiar, but there's no time to dwell on it. 

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The kid blinks back to a slim awareness, only remnants of it at first, enough for Tubbo to stare past him and mutter something almost unintelligible under his breath.

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"I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"

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He follows his gaze.

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The compass's glass is broken, cracked by the impact of hitting the ground, a body's worth of weight having fallen on it. The red needle points true and steady.

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And that's the problem. That sentiment right there. That Tubbo is relying far too much on Tommy, that's _weakness_ , the kid is weak beyond that facade of a reasonable and competent leader, his use quickly bumping up into a wall labeled _useless_. That so long as Tommy lives in his head, as long as there's that hope, the problem persists. The weakness persists. He can't control that.

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~~Hadn't They thought the same thing of him?~~

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Dream steps back, soundless and cold, his eyes flash behind his mask. A split second decision to dig his grave further, because if he's to earn a rap sheet for interference, for some sort of unholy treason on every level in the star shaped eyes of pretentious ~~gods~~ and Their governance by way of absent, shrugging jurisdiction and complete reciprocity. He thinks, he might as well make every step out of line worthwhile. Living and breathing and never dying by the sentiment; ~~he's done this, he knows he's done this, he knows it doesn't matter~~. 

It takes him only a second to mentally snare, snap and drag something both into and out of place, like plucking a star out of the sky and pinning it to a hasty diorama. Forcing it to burn there until it fizzled out.

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As if it didn't threaten to permanently scar and blind him the longer he held it there, too much power allotted to a task that's comparable to biting off his own fingers before they can frostbite. It's a stupid decision, wildly impulsive and absent of forethought. He knows he'll probably only get away with it once, and he doesn't care about wasting it. In this case, the end justifies the means and his worries are too frigid to matter.

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Tubbo starts to bleed again and his panic, his inability to breathe, his pain, the reliving it, has the kid thrashing. Kicking and hoping he can escape but all he has is the wall at his back and death standing in front of him. Both just as cold and unmoving as the other.

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He dies.

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And he watches the kid blink awake, wound free and alert, words bubbling up only to be cut off, eyes glazed like a rabbit in a snare. 

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He dies again.

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Gurgling, wheezing, the sound of shoes slapping the floor, nails scraping the ground.

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Tubbo dies.

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He watches.

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Tubbo dies.

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__He watches._ _

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It goes on for so long that he stops counting. It goes on for so long that he feels the universe give up it's monumentous task to thrash and right itself with a great heave. A final parting, _fine, you win,_ but not without it's warning, not without some preordained punishment dished out like the dead wishes and final decrees of an ancient sentencing. Metaphysical jail cell in the shape of a world he'd never known to be anything but his own, all of it decided, just fate, just destiny; stuck in the same broken loop.

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__There comes a point when Tubbo stops fighting altogether, slumped on his side, hands limp, head turned to stare straight up at the ceiling. He bleeds out again, not even a hand brought up to staunch the wound this time, eyes already empty and cold._ _

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__Preemptively dead if not for the whistle of strangled air through the gaps between parted lips and teeth drenched red._ _

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__His eyes hardly shift from their glassy state when the wound blinks away and starts up all over again._ _

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__Blue so blank and glassy it's as dim as fogged glass._ _

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__Tubbo dies._ _

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__He stares, eyes equally dead. Pathologically calm and statue-like with all the combined acceptance of a man waiting in the line at the bloodied chopping block. The _shing_ of the executioner's axe filling the air._ _

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__Blood slicks the ground, spilt so thick it's stench is overwhelming._ _

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__He forces Tubbo to relive the same hell only to snap him back to the start, like a scratched record, a broken disc, ~~like him, like this world, like L'manberg, he's done this before~~ and he watches long after the kid is a husk, long after his own limbs go numb, long after his chest starts to burn and burn and his fingertips turn a necrotic black, wither creeping up cell by cell. _ _

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__Every death now hits with a sharper ache. A tug on his mind, a fleeting moment of despair that's stronger than the last, an unheeded warning that resets like climbing a ladder and falling one rung for every two, and then more and then more until hopes of reaching the edge settle for desperate moments spent clawing up the soil at the bottom of the pit._ _

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__Over and over like a ticking clock with no cadence._ _

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__Tubbo lays there, gurgling weakly heaving a last wheezing breath._ _

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__He dies._ _

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__It's different._ _

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__He feels the kid give up like a snapping rib in his chest._ _

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__Vague hints of an impending doom crowd his mind, loud and screeching things, all of them terrified, all of them the old notes of condemnation for a task failed. A passing part of him is afraid he'll see a ghost rise up instead, mind too broken, too seperate to be anything but a shallow projection of the soul it came from._ _

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__No, no, no--_ The world jumps and shatters, crying obsidian shaking like a scratched film reel in front of his eyes, no windows, no doors, shaped like a cell. It's still there. He's still there-- He can't remember- _

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He nearly slips in the blood as he stumbles forward, grabs at Tubbo's shoulders, fingers twisting in the suit jacket as he shakes him. Trying to wake him with an angry sort of injustice in his words, in his threats, like he's not the one who killed him. Like Tubbo had the audacity to _die_.

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__The temporal loop breaks, spitting them out at the start._ _

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__Nausea sits heavy on his tongue, as heavy as the tight anger in his chest._ _

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It was a mistake, something he prides himself on the knowledge to fix like stitches slapped on old wounds. He opts to ignore the encroaching feeling that it's too late, in shuddering visions of black stone and dark blood muttering in the primal corners of his mind.

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__He doesn't see his fingertips stay a necrotic black beneath his gloves, a warning to future transgressions, because ~~gods~~ forbid it should ever reach his heart- he thinks he's supposed to remember what that means, but it's hazy, out of touch, echoing too loud like every thought, every movement and word that he recalls, all of it feeling less real and more like notes scrawled like mementos on a page; desperate to be remembered. All the angles in his mind left bent just a bit more out of sync, an incendiary flash of betrayal, of jealously, an acrid bitterness curved like envy because he can't understand why the kid didn't just listen to him, further than that he can't understand why it feels like he's been trapped. __

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__He waits, sitting back on his haunches._ _

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__The kid still doesn't move. Even as that splitting wound across his throat doesn't reappear, no more blood spills, no more blood coats anything, Tubbo's eyes closed now like he's just fallen asleep on the wooden floor._ _

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__A pained groan escapes Tubbo's lips, in the next heartbeat the kid trying to scrape himself off the ground._ _

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__He scrambles to help him up, voice gentle and soft, comforting notes he knows how to mimic. "Tubbo--"_ _

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__The blood is gone, it's gone, but Dream sees it like a broken afterimage on his wrists, his forearms where his jacket's rolled up, sees it staining the whites of Tubbo's shirt under his suit._ _

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__Tubbo flinches back with a shout, kicking and punching until he manages to get away, until he's backed into the far corner of the office. Fingers twisting in the curls of his hair, Tubbo keeps his head bowed, forehead pressed into the wall of his knees as he utters a sound like a rabbit being gutted._ _

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__He forgets to feel the pain from the hits that connected, stunned into sitting there, hands still hovering in the air._ _

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__Twisted sobs hammer against his ears._ _

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__And he watches, hands falling by his sides as he stands, shoulders curved slightly in, head bowed just a tick, the blue in his inventory growing darker and darker._ _

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_"What the fuck--"_ the broken strangled shout cuts the air, Tubbo's fingers scrabble at a clear throat with no hint of a scar. "What the fuck was that?!"

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__He opens his mouth, only to shut it with a grimace, permanent smile aimed away._ _

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_"Dream?!"_ Tubbo stands halfway on shaky limbs, forearm braced against the cobblestone, spine pressed into the corner. "Was I-- was I--" 

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__The kid can't say it, chest heaving, on the verge of hyperventilating again, a far off look in his eyes._ _

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__Stepping forward, he shakes his head, slow and exaggerated, hands out and crouched more on Tubbo's level. Determined to say the lines that taste like he's playing a part in some unseen play._ _

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__"I found you asleep at your desk..." He gestures to it, one foot placed slowly in front of the other._ _

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__"But I- I didn't--" Tubbo's gaze darts to the desk, snapping back to him._ _

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__He cuts him off, another step, and then another. Voice surgically precise and gentle. "You must've been having a nightmare. 'Cause you... well, you didn't know who I was when I tried waking you up."_ _

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__Tubbo frowns, but his hands start to uncurl from shaking fists, sinking down into a haphazard sit as the adrenaline wanes, as the perceived threat starts to wear thin._ _

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__"You fell; you fell and hit your head trying to get away from me." He says it like a caring friend, he says it as if he's the only person in the world Tubbo should believe. He says it like the voice of reason. He says it and believes it._ _

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__Tubbo's hand reaches up, touching a very real bruise at the back of his head. "I thought…"_ _

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__Blue eyes slide to the windows, a spark of doubt._ _

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__"I mean, If it's any consolation, you've got one hell of a kick." His voice hops along a more familiar tune, joking, light.__

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__"I'm… I'm sorry." Tubbo apologizes, trying a smile on for size, a laugh to match but it jumps and fails as his brows pinch and his lips twist. "Guess I shouldn't be working so late."_ _

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__The kid stays on the floor, rubbing at his throat and staring at the desk. The action is an annoying reminder to the raw ragged shape of pain wrung like two hands around his own throat, jagged and bright like he'd taken the blade to himself instead. It's a problem for later._ _

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__He cuts off Tubbo's line of sight, a palm held out to help him up._ _

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__Tubbo takes it with a certain lack of haste._ _

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__He helps the kid stand, making sure he's steady on his feet and there's a point a half a millisecond after the fact where Tubbo pulls violently away._ _

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__Eyes wide, shoulders colliding with the wall, one hand cradling the other, Tubbo looks down at the appendage like he doesn't understand why he wrenched it out of Dream's. He looks at it the same way someone slams their hand on the burner of a stove and forgets that it really, really hurts. Tears form in his eyes another apology on his lips._ _

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He pulls him into a hug, "Hey, hey, it's okay, _you're okay--_ "

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__Like a desperate kid reunited with a long lost parent, Tubbo caves, fingers fisting in the back of Dream's jacket a face shoved into his chest as he cries._ _

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__A few minutes pass until Tubbo falls quiet, no doubt savoring that something that he'd lost, maybe never even had apart from the lingering traces of a boy with almost the same hair, nearly the same eyes. Family, a word that he thinks might look more like a fractured web of broken glass than something allowed to be whole in Tubbo's mind._ _

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__"Hey, you still have that compass, right?" He starts, low and quiet, almost paternally benevolent. "The one Ghostbur gave to you."_ _

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__Tubbo tenses, stepping back, hand going to his pocket only to find nothing there._ _

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__Hand raised, the compass manifests in the middle of his palm. He holds it aloft like a precious offering._ _

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__"I need you to burn it."_ _

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__It all clicks in such a visceral way in Tubbo's mind that he can practically hear the slide of the mental pin into place. It's a true testament to how tired the kid is when he doesn't bother fighting for the truth._ _

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__"Why?" Tubbo asks it as someone who already knows the answer; hollow and defeated._ _

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__"'Cause Tommy burned his. He threw it in the lava like it was nothing." He doesn't falter in the lie. "He doesn't care about you, Tubbo, I don't think he ever really did. I mean c'mon, you heard him say it yourself."_ _

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__This time, Tubbo accepts it without resistance. This time he watches as Tubbo grabs the compass and watches as the kid's eyes remain emptier than they did in death._ _

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__The sound of flint clicking against stone fills the air._ _

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__There's an emptiness in Tubbo's eyes that starts to feel less and less like a victory the longer the kid stares into the flames. It doesn't feel like an accomplishment any more than seeing the sunrise does. Orange eats up the blue in the kid's eyes. Lava bubbles burst like distant echoes in his ears._ _

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__"We're different." Tubbo's voice is as empty as his eyes._ _

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__He hums in reply, tilting his head, waiting and watching, giving the kid his final words to what he assumes will be a distant eulogy._ _

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__"I never wanted control."_ _

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__There's no holding back his surprised blink. It goes unseen, but only just as his shoulders drop and his head raises a bit higher, flipping to something more harsh and guarded when he catches it. He's surprised and therefore uncertain. Both taste equal amounts of wrong on his tongue, he thinks he's supposed to already know this._ _

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__"I just wanted what's best for everyone." Tubbo squeezes the compass."I wanted them to be safe, Dream. No more wars, no more fighting. Everyone working together for something... for something bigger and better than themselves."_ _

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__He feels no more sure of himself when Tubbo casts the cracked compass into the fireplace. Watching as the thin metal twists and parts, the glass pops with a crack and the red needle keeps pointing until it's beyond recognition, until Tubbo stares and sees nothing._ _

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__"If you can promise me that-" Tubbo's voice falters, leaping back stronger, "That no one else has to get hurt, I'll do what you want." He sighs, head hung and eyes shut. "I'll make sure they never see Tommy again."_ _

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__"Mm, I can't make that promise."_ _

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__"Then promise you won't _hurt_ him!" Tubbo rounds on him, backlit by the fire, flames angry, sparks popping, hair so mussed that for a moment it looks as if he has the bumpy outline of ram horns. "You've already taken so much from him, the least you can do is that!" _ _

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__He stands taller, occupying the office like a demon at the crossroads offering an open palm, invisible swathes of blood scuffing the floor between them in another time, another life. He stands and knows he's only doing what's right, what's deserved. He offers his palm and knows in some significant way, Tubbo has to see it too._ _

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__Tubbo looks down at his offered hand and then up at his face. The mask stays absent of any holes no matter how desperately Tubbo's eyes search it, always standing as that ever present barrier, that obstacle, that immortal smile._ _

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__A palm slots against his own. He grins. "I promise."_ _

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I hope you all can see where I'm going with this-- like haha oh no, obsidian, intense deja vu, weird rot creeping up limbs and bad memories? I'm sure this will have no consequences for the future 
> 
> Also I'm fully aware the Blue that Ghostbur gives out isn't exactly a stone but that's what we're going with for _reasons_
> 
>  **Important Edit:** There's some discussion about future chapters that happened in the comments down below
> 
> And I know some people like reading comments and stuff so just a heads up if you see those walls of text I'd avoid 'em if you don't like spoilers!!!


	3. God Bless us Everyone.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream makes Tommy forget he ever cared about something as silly and sentimental as a compass in the first place.
> 
> ~~It's all too familiar.~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song Catalyst by Linkin Park. 
> 
> Keep in mind this is Dream's pov so any characters thought of negatively are just a reflection of that--  
> That being said, from here on out things tend to get more chaotic and unreliable; 
> 
> If you've ever seen Bly Manor or shows that tell stories in unreliable loops and is all memories and interrupting flashbacks like that- well let's just say keep that in mind 
> 
> A lot of this is dialogue ripped from the streams and rearranged for this chapter lmao Dream just talks awkwardly sometimes I'm just throwing down some of the lines he says, it's more down to earth to think of the dude everyone sees as a villian just being like that sometimes instead of always smooth and perfect 
> 
> Warnings: suicidal themes, violence against a minor, manipulation, abuse, other similar themes  
> -corrupted text, in case that's an eyestrain for anyone

Dream only stays in L'Manberg long enough to ensure that Tubbo makes his announcement. 

The president chooses a frank and logical explanation, simply stating that with the nether portal destroyed they had no way of getting to Tommy with any sort of ease. That it was something they'd be rescheduling, and that Tommy would understand. They'd send a message along with the only person allowed to see the exiled citizen. 

This ruffles some feathers, or fur, at least in Fundy's case. The fox's eyes sweep the surrounding area until they land on Dream's figure hidden among the shade of L'Manberg's most revered tree. 

Muzzle bent and teeth flashing, Fundy gives him a look like he's stepped in something foul. 

He offers Fundy a sarcastic salute in return, a bit cocky but it's not as if acting any different would instill more trust between himself and the fox. If anything, Fundy would just sound as radical as anyone else who brought forward an illegitimate concern, slander dripping like drivel, dismissed by a president who was more doormat than person. 

His eyes skirt across the gathering until they get caught on twin circles of red and green staring right back. Ranboo stands there like a tall stone statue among the rest, always on the sidelines and never seeming to learn that he had to put a little more bite into his bark, that if he never actually did something it'd just be the same.

He smirks, the slight tug of his lips folding into a thin frown when he tilts his head, his mask only shows an unwavering dead smile. Ranboo narrows his eyes and looks away, the black and white of him obscured a moment later by the crowd of bodies stepping into the fray for another pointless shouting match.

Some things never change.

Pushing off the trunk of the L'Mantree, he heads down the wooden path. He doesn't pause to spectate the arguments that break out like the pops of fireworks behind him. He has a party to get to after all.

He ends up walking quite a ways before he realizes he's not alone.

Ghostbur trails behind him like a confused shadow. Following him out of L'Manberg, then out of the nation-states, and then the greater kingdom altogether, until they're ensconced in the dappled shade of thick woods. 

"Where are you going?" 

He doesn't answer, hoping the ghost will lose interest or even forget why he's following in the first place. There's no such luck and he's less than keen on taking an axe to him again. At that point it would start to get suspicious, and there's already the risk that the loose marble rattling around Ghostbur's skull might finally twist and turn the right direction and he'd remember.

"Are you going to Tommy's party? Everyone keeps mentioning it but I..." That tremulous voice trails off, caught in some lapse of thought before Ghostbur speaks again, a tad bit firmer. "Where is Tommy?"

He stops, allowing the ghost to catch up before he continues his trek. "He's in Logstedshire." 

"Oh, right." The ghost deflates, distress folding ashen features. "It's just that… I don't think I remember where that is." 

He gestures vaguely out to the depths of the forest. "Oh. Well, it's out past everything, out near the tundra before you hit the mountains." 

That could theoretically be anywhere.

"But that's so far." Ghostbur seems to consider this for a second, finger tapping his chin as he looks up to where the treetops kiss the sky. "How'd he get so far?" 

"I took him there." _You went with me once,_ he doesn't say.

Ghostbur accepts this in a stride, moving on to the next train of thought like it's listing off the tracks, not a brake mechanism in sight. "See the thing is, they can't get to him. Tubbo said someone broke the portal last night and it'll take a while to get operational again." 

Something seems to click in the spirit's brain, finger tapping his chin before he points it. "Wait, aren't you really powerful- I mean, couldn't you just repair it?" 

He narrows his eyes, hesitating on his next step just a fraction too long before he lets his heel hit the earth and gives a full body shrug. 

"I'm not a god." He mixes the word with a scoff.

The forest cuts to silence, shocked into a lapse of sound like even the wind expected to be struck down. The ghost's eyes dart around, tongue darting out to wet his lips.

The wind returns with the rustle of the leaves in the canopy. It hits with a familiar sting and his steps fall a bit harder, eyes darker.

"Oh, right--" it's said with a smile that shatters and falls. "Right...." The ghost trails off, falling slightly behind again and he turns his head just enough to see the translucent figure. 

"I just… I want to see him, I don't know if he's going to be okay. I… I don't want him to be sad- 'cause I know he'll be sad we missed the party."

"He'll be fine. He just won't be able to see anyone for a little while, that's all." He reassures, nodding his head in a curt gesture for the ghost to keep up. 

The forest starts to thin, shifting from eroded hills to mountains clawing up towards the sky, the slope of the shore down to the water not far now. 

He knows there's a nether portal hidden further out, a spotty thing with a less than solid manifestation, always trying to spit you out somewhere different. He can practically feel the sparking energy of it thrum like the hint of a threat in his blood. Equal parts drawn to it and repulsed. It's nestled among the sheer cliffs that frame the shore, tucked neatly from most eyes and in such disrepair almost no one was stupid enough to risk it.

He can't let Ghostbur go with him and with all the convenience the universe can muster, the fluffy whites of innocuous clouds gather darker overhead, stirring and ominous. Humidity climbing until he feels the distant roll of thunder rumble in his chest. The smell and the taste of the approaching rain sit at the base of his tongue like a convenient solution. 

"Right, right. I know, _I know that_..." Ghostbur is ahead of him now, walking backwards as he waves his hands for emphasis, words gravely serious and yet still meandering; lost. "I know he did something, I know he was exiled-- I just wanted, no, _I want_ to be there; in Logstedshire. I think he needs me." 

They arrive at the edge of the forest and Dream holds his hand out to catch the first drop of rain. He rubs his fingers spreading the moisture into leather gloves before he drops his hand by his side and looks back out at the thick wall of approaching precipitation in the distance. The sound of it like a quiet, growing whisper.

"I'll take care of him." His voice comes out much softer than he intended. He winces a fraction at the loose mumbles, trying to scrape back together a confident tone as the din of torrential weather barrels closer. "But um... listen, I need you to stay here and look after Tubbo for me." 

"Why? Is he alright?" The ghost asks, shrinking away from a spot of rain that lands on his arm, slicing through with a hiss, "He seemed fine this morning." 

Ensconced further back by the safety of the tree's trunk, the ghost shrugs and looks at the sky with dark eyes. "A tad upset, but given the circumstances--" 

"Just keep an eye on him." Dream acts the proper part of someone marginally concerned, exasperated, frustrated, all those little things that he's not sure he remembers properly anymore. "And tell me anything you hear, there's a few dumbasses who- well, they might try something soon." 

In the silence between, he casts his eyes to the corners, waiting for Ghostbur's response, waiting for the gears rusted beyond repair to grind and click in that mind filled to the brim with a spiraled out explosive fractal of two clashing ideals. He flexes his fingers, quiet and subtle, wondering if he'll have to grab the spirit by the back of the neck and toss him into the rain.

The wall of it crashes across where they're standing, thundering and loud, lightning cracks across the sky drowning everything out. 

When the white light dissipates, the ghost is nodding, dull eyes trained on him. 

"Oh, okay. I can do that..." Ghostbur trails off, arms hugging himself as he tries to avoid the sudden slant of the rain, yellow sweater tucked over his hands like mittens, shoulders scrunched up to his ears. 

The wind quiets down, the rain falling just as hard, but no longer sweeping into their little spot of shelter. 

"Well if you're- if you are going to see him, I have some blue. And--" Ghostbur rummages around in the bag strapped across his chest, held by some impossible miracle while everything else seemed to fall through him. "Could you take him this letter?"

The spirit holds up an envelope decorated with a series of clashing colors, the front of it scrawled with rather neat, if only a bit shaky, font that simply reads, 'sorry we missed your party.' 

"I managed to get a few people to sign it, you can sign it too if you'd like…" The ghost flashes a smile, small and wavering. "We wanted to let him know that we'll... we'll visit once the portal's fixed." 

Dream doesn't return the gesture as he takes the letter and the blue, pocketing the latter immediately. 

Studying the letter, he turns it over. There's a picture of two sad stick figures hugging on the back. A few drops of rain crash heavy through the thick shelter of the leaves and land in quick succession on the paper. They run some of the ink into watery splotches. 

He tucks the letter away, somewhere safe, somewhere that hopefully it will never see the light of day.

"He'll like that." Dream finally smiles, something half-empty, wasted in its effort, it carries far lighter and inconspicuous in tone. 

Ghostbur tilts his head, eyes crinkling at the corner as his smile widens ever so slightly, still just shy of crumpling into something sad, eyes always a bit blue.

Stepping out into the rain, head down and hood up, he leaves the ghost to stand, and wait, and watch beneath the tree. 

-

Tommy is dragging the jukebox down to the beach when he finds him. The kid's frame is practically shaking apart at the molecular level, excitement riddled like a thick, infectious cloud around his form. Face and hands scuffed with fresh bruises and cuts, but his eyes are the brightest they've ever been. 

He walks up behind him, not offering to help, just simply there to watch. Tommy finally manages to drop the jukebox closer to the shore, dusting his hands off like it's a job well done, a full crooked grin. The kid spins on his heel only to jump back, a shoddily forged sword manifesting in his grasp. 

Rocking back on his heels, he chuckles, a wheezing airy thing as he watches Tommy realize who he is a millisecond after the fact. At least the kid had decent reflexes, even if his smithing was shit. 

Lowering his weapon, before finally dismissing it, Tommy crosses his arms with the sharp glint of mock annoyance in his eyes. "Why the fuck are you always sneakin' up on me, prick?" 

"Sorry, I was running a bit late--" 

Dream ignores the question, he always does and there's still a bit of laughter threaded through his words, making them so much lighter. Just that extra bit of amicable that makes Tommy roll his eyes and mutter a _'yeah you were, bitch'_ , but not really mean it. At least not in the way that Tommy knows how to sling curses like throwing stones at windows, these were just soft and harmless, a desperate sort of look in the kid's blue eyes that screamed, _finally... finally someone's here._

Making a show of looking around, he steps past the kid, black boots sinking into where the grass is eaten up by the sand. He looks over his shoulder, a question slipping off his tongue like he couldn't possibly fathom the answer. "So, where's everyone else?" 

Eyes back on the water, he gestures to the empty chairs and empty tables. "I mean today's the day of the party, right?" 

Tommy seizes up, a hopeless sort of flash across his face before he seems to stamp it down, disguising it under a thick wool of irritation. "Yeah yeah, they're all running late _apparently_ \--" 

Something dawns on the Tommy, the sentence slamming to a stop so suddenly it's like he's actually been struck. The kid looks down and mumbles hastily under his breath. "Right, sorry."

Dream raises a brow, eyes darting around, trying to determine if there was something he somehow didn't catch, some lingering phrase or gesture, anything--

An array of random items hit the grass with dull clatters and soft thuds, Tommy pulling the leather chest plate over his head, the leather shields on his legs following, all of it done so clinically and detached like he'd done so for days now. This was the first time he'd done it without any prompting at all, not even a shallow hole in sight to safely destroy the items in.

"No, no it's fine." He says, hand out, palm down, flat and steady as he shakes it like he's dismissing a dog. 

Tommy looks up, brows furrowed deep at the middle, eyes swimming as if he's genuinely and personally betrayed by the illogical idea that he could be allowed to actually keep his things. The pattern so ingrained now that Tommy looks right at him, hears his words, and still unties the cords of the vambraces on his arms.

Dream clicks his tongue under his breath, looking to the side, his mind moving at a rapid pace until he's weighed the costs and the merits of a mind so stripped of autonomy that it might as well be the hapless, wasteland of a ghost's.

And ghosts were… aggravating at best. 

"No really, keep it, Tommy." Crouching down he grabs up one of the iron ingots and shakes it firmly in the air when Tommy just stares. 

Tommy reaches for it, hand jumping back, fingers curling in and away, lips parted on a question that never falls. He stays frozen, caught between understanding. 

Thinking he really has to drive home the point, Dream grabs Tommy's wrist yanking his hand forward until he can force the iron ingot into a half open palm and fold the kid's fingers around it. 

It's the same way he'd seen Wilbur hand things to Tommy during the revolution, towards the end that is, down in that ravine when he'd watched the man practically split from himself in a sweeping sense of disillusionment. When he'd driven the divide deeper like a cruel joke all for the explosive punchline.

The flinch he receives from Tommy surprises him, enough so that he let's something like the beginning of a _what_ fall from his lips, but only half finished before it trails off into nothing when the kid backpedals.

Rubbing at his wrist, wrapped in those dirty bandages all the way to the elbows, Tommy watches him with the wary hunch of a feral animal. Blue eyes distant, muttering something he doesn't catch before he finally gathers up all the dropped items, the armor disappearing into his inventory rather than being put back on. 

_Huh._ Dream tilts his head, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He chalks it up to some latent association floating around the kid's head, Tommy was just _like that_ after all. 

"Thanks." 

The voice is quiet, it hardly sounds like Tommy at all and he gives the kid a smile in exchange, only seen in the slope of his shoulders, the casual set of his stance.

Trying to be as friendly as possible even when he keeps thinking about Tubbo flinching the same way. His hands curl a bit harder in his pockets, forming fists even as the rest of him remains altogether aloof. 

"Well, um…" Dream starts, looking to the sun as it crawls across the sky. "Let's just make the best of it then, we can wait for everyone to show up." 

A breathless, offended sort of scoff leaves Tommy. "They better, I baked a fuckin' cake and everythin'--" 

"How'd you even make a cake?" He interrupts with a wheezing laugh, question blended into it.

"I have a stove, idiot." Tommy fires back, stomping down to the beach, calling over his shoulder. "'M not just eating meat raw like some kind of fuckin' caveman."

The cake, all things considered, is impressive, and so are the other dishes of food, laid out on the uneven planks of the lashed together table. No doubt all of it gathered and prepared throughout the night, Tommy's eyes wrung with the deepest purple he's seen on the kid yet.

He sits across from him, neutral and patient, occasionally looking out to where the sun is sinking closer and closer to the watery horizon. He doesn't move his head to do so, just his eyes, mask staring forward and silent for him. 

Tommy drums his fingers on the table, a staccato little tune that makes his own fingers itch under the nail beds, eager to echo the restless movement. 

But like a broken mirror, he remains still, unmoving and statue-like as he watches the kid push back against the table every once in a while. The stump Tommy's sat on leaning at a precarious angle from the ground before he lets it fall back with a thump in the sand. Repeating the pattern, unable to sit still for longer than a few seconds. 

It's not as if he doesn't understand the sentiment, but there's an odd sort of calmness settled over his shoulders, a numbness that makes him sit in stark contrast.

By the time the sun kisses the horizon, Tommy has gone unusually still.

He considers reaching for the cake at this point, it'd be cruel to let it go to waste. 

Unbidden, the thought conjures up the warm creature comforts of the community house-- his lips tug into a frown, the thought stuck like the sound of the all too loud realization that he would never get to pick and choose his last words before being written off as a villain. It's how it had to happen. 

Breaking him out of the thought, Tommy falls forward, forehead thunking against the table fingers in his hair, a growl drifts from him before finally muffled words hit the air. "Why is no one here? They promised--"

The kid sits up, "Wil told- he told Tubbo in person! You saw-- he told him in person, right?!" 

The genuine distress is so palpable that he almost feels a shred of pity, a sliver of something that is marginally uncomfortable with how desperate Tommy is for something as stupid as a party. 

"Yeah, yeah, he told him in person." He shrugs, hand waving in the air, lying as natural as breathing. "I mean most people he left it in their homes, I don't think they could've missed it, but..." 

Tommy stares.

"I mean they _might've_." He stresses the word, sowing the slightest seed of unwatered doubt like an arrow nocked, drawn and shot between the eyes.

Picking up one of the wooden forks on the table, he studies it for a moment, twisting it in the air like it's the most interesting thing in the world. The texture rough and catching, so hastily whittled. It's certainly more interesting than speculating about Schrödinger's party, speculating what constitutes a gathering, what makes it both alive and dead, why it really matters so damn much. And to Tommy, well he thinks it's shaping up to be a bit more dead. 

This really was and would always be the only way; cutting him off completely, isolation and loneliness the bitter, metal bit shoved in the stubborn horse's mouth. 

"With Tubbo… I _saw_ Wilbur tell him." He is careful to make himself sound convicted, waving towards L'manberg before pointing at the table, the other hand rocking the utensil back and forth between the back of his thumb and his fingers. 

"So it's just- You're the--" Tommy draws in a long breath, eyes closed a moment, hands folded as if in prayer against his nose. "It's just you?" 

Tommy stands, slamming his palms down. "And you were _late_?!"

Dream almost laughs, _almost_. "I mean I figured you'd care the least if I was here. I _assumed_ everyone else would be here." 

"And Tubbo…" Tommy stares down, frame sagging. 

He stops fiddling with the fork, stops being nonchalant, stops being confident the moment that name hits the air again. He lets the silence hang like a man at the gallows, lets it fester and twist before he speaks and says the words without malice, "Guess they all had something more important to do." 

"More important than seeing me?" 

It's whispered, strangled and broken, as if for the first time the thought donned on Tommy that he wasn't actually important. 

"No one cares about me anymore."

"That's not true--"

"No! No one cares about me." Tommy cuts him off, voice raised, sat back down now, back painfully curved and shoulders awkwardly raised, his fists curled tight and pressed into the table, knuckles white where they bruisingly mash against the wood grain. 

"Tommy--"

"No, no." Tommy laughs, all twisted and artificial, teeth flashing more like a warning than a smile. "No one cares about me. No one showed up to my party!" 

He remains quiet this time. He'd let Tommy stumble the rest of the way into his own conclusions, a sheep forced to the slaughter through narrow corridors and shut doors, one after the other. Never knowing the same person who shoved him through the iron gates of the chute waited at the end, bolt gun glinting in hand, finger on the trigger. 

"And it's the one thing! The one thing that they had to do for me--"

 _'You had one job! One job, Tommy, and you couldn't even do that!' Tubbo's voice rings in his ears, a distant echoing memory as for a single moment he's standing on those obsidian walls, the world small and distant, left only to observe the scene below, a properly distant_ ~~god~~ _left to watch and listen as friends become strangers, as strangers become enemies, and he tells himself it's only right, it's only fair, he convinces himself of the tired lie that it could never go any other way. 'You're selfish.'_

"--after exiling me and fucking me over!" Tommy points out across the water, lip curled. "And not one of 'em care about me anymore." 

"'Cause I'm not in _L'Manberg_ anymore." The kid throws air quotes harshly around the name of his old home, eyes rolling before settling on a dead set glare, "'Cause I'm not with- 'cause I'm not the vice president!" 

Tommy's shoulders heave, fists curled at his sides, arms shaking, the muted red sleeves of his shirt start to bleed. Red running across, running through, red on white, red soaking a dark suit, on pale fingers, on a pale face, in dead blue eyes, clumped rusty and thick in blond hair, splashed across polished wood.

 _Red, red, red, red, red_ , he blinks and blinks and why the hell won't it go away?

He shuts his eyes, red still caught behind the lids, throat stinging, the gurgles of labored breaths puncturing his ear drums. It's only a small mercy that it's not the grooved black texture of obsidian.

He sighs, the swirl of old warnings cast in the throw of dice on a shattered chessboard, never making much sense for that exact reason, but always rattling just the same. Always in the notes of an ancient tongue he refused to understand.

It doesn't take any effort to remove his mask, an innate enchantment being the only thing that ever truly holds it in place. He lets the disguise rest on his thigh, keeping his features just shy of neutral even as his pulse whistles in his ears and his fingertips turn to static.

The breeze from the sea whips against his face, and it's all so immediately strange, almost painful. As small of a nuisance as it is, he never really got used to any of it, never got used to the wind's razor sharp whip, never acclimated to the elements so harsh against his eyes without a constant barrier, the torch light now blindingly bright even in the civil twilight. 

It's stupidly vulnerable and he despises it, but there's not a lot of trust be fostered if there's always a mask in the way, an animalistic sort of instinct to trust something with more mirror neurons and less rigid, permanent smiles--

It's what he tells himself, because he's not about to admit that he took it off because he couldn't… he couldn't fucking breathe. ~~Like he was drowning in the blood from a slit throat. Like he was the one who died and died and died.~~

He looks at the mask in his lap, turning it in the light, and in between the red, in that prickling kiss of the wind on his cheeks, the salt spray stinging his eyes, he forgets for just a second that he's sitting across from Tommy ~~god~~ -damned Innit.

The kid in question has gone uncharacteristically quiet. 

His eyes reflect too much light when they flicker back up to meet Tommy's.

"I knew it." Tommy leans back with a convicted sort of energy, focus switched from a doomed party to a fresh target, latching on if only for a little while.

He raises a brow, question riding a laugh. "Uh, knew what?" 

"You're fuckin' ugly."

" _Hah-hah._ "

"No, no I mean it, Big D--" Tommy gestures to his own face as he continues. "It's all fucked and shit. Like it's _all_ messed up. 'S prolly why you cover it up, so you don't scare away any women. And you know I know a lot about women. Kind of an expert if you know what I mean--" 

He crinkles his nose, shaking his head with a huffed, close lipped laugh, "Tommy what the hell are you talking about? You know like three women, if that--"

He cuts himself off, flicking his wrist before gripping the short dagger that forms in the center of his palm.

Tommy's eyes flash to the weapon, honing in on instinct, but Dream remains aloof in his movements, broadcasting them in the most nonthreatening manner as he simply uses the blade to divest a slice of cake, scoots it on to a flat piece of oiled wood serving as plate, and then continues talking as if not a second passed. 

"-and you literally said last week that scars were, and I quote, 'cool'?" Two fingers lifted from the hilt of the dagger he throws air quotes around the word, the blade glinting in the evening sun before he dismisses it with a lazy afterthought. 

"I know plenty of women, m'kay, alright." Tommy affirms, thumb jabbed towards his own chest, leveling him with a look that naturally means he's about to open his mouth and say something one half childish, one half embarrassing. "And- and they are-"

Tommy gives that frustrated growl, words lost like an angry scrappy dog, swiping a curled finger across a fresh pink line cutting through his brow, earned when he stood too close to one of the TNT blasts. "Scars are _cool_ , just not on your fuckin' mug, Mr. Humble As Shit. You're just jealous."

He rolls his eyes, amused huff pressed from his lips as he rubs at the back of his neck and then sets his mask on the table, the mocking face grinning up at the sky. 

He was used to seeing that empty, porcelain shell in reflections, anything beneath it left behind like an afterthought. Still, he knows it. He knows the winding, twisting road map of scars like slashes over his cheeks, across his nose, thick and twisted and gnarled, slicing violent and loud through his brow and down to his chin. Knows the subtle absence of flesh from his lip, like it sports the permanent nick of a knife pressed too deep.

He knows them like the daily greeting of shaking hands at the sun's rise, scars littering the backs of those too, like knuckles constantly split by the gravely ground on an endless loop, the labyrinth of scars stretching up his arms, his shoulders, his torso.

He treats them like phantoms without homes to haunt, timeless and lost and usually never his to begin with. No matter the glamour or the enchantment, the scars remained, like a finger pointed and looking to cast blame and hell, he never had a good alibi. 

So he hides each one like he's hiding ricin laced love letters at the bottom of an enderchest. Often unwanted, but maybe one day useful.

And it's not like he agrees with Tommy's sentiment to _any_ degree, he couldn't give less of a shit, he's been around too long for that. It's simply the nagging fear that--

That...

 _He watches Tommy stumble, arrow sticking out between his ribs, green fletch bright and mocking, the water swallowing him whole as the kid goes tumbling off the boardwalk. A stupid, naive idea, a duel- a damn duel for nothing! He turns away hand gripping the bow, the wood creaking and splintering as he feels the kid gasp and drown, feels hands scrabbling for an arrow like_ he's _the one drowning, like he's the one screaming and kicking and choking down breathless lungfuls of water, like he's the one turning the water red. Like he's the one being dragged back to the surface, a healing potion pressed bitter and acrid to his lips, a fatal wound closed by the miracle brewed draught._

_Miracle indeed. He raises a hand to his chest, rubbing at a spot to the left of his sternum, blood warm and slick under armor. His lungs rattle on each exhale, heart thudding around a ragged wound as he flashes George and Sapnap a smile, fists and voices raised in the air._

He's afraid that one day someone might see them and realize, and know he is undoubtedly weak. 

It's really a pointless thought to dwell on though. He doesn't think any of them could scrape together the collective brain cells to ever connect the dots. 

He waves an empty palm, gesture sweepingly at all of Tommy with a raised brow and a smirk, acting like he didn't just get caught in his head. "Well I mean, at least I don't have _your_ face. Y'know it's all…"

"Mine?! I- hwhat? What the fuck's wrong with my face?" 

"You know. It's just _like_ that." Dream gestures, faking a grimace. 

"Oh, I bet you wish you had my face on your face." Tommy jabs a finger across the table, shit-eating grin showing off a slightly crooked overbite. "You big green bitch, I oughta--" 

"Tommy."

The kid's mouth shuts with a click, sitting back down with a cowed stare. He lets the silence linger like morning fog, propping his chin up on the back of his hand he uses the other to stab off a piece of that sad little slice of cake.

Bringing it towards his lips, he looks past it, eyes glinting as he speaks with the utmost gravity. "This is why you don't have any friends."

The last word falls like the downward chop of an axe and he takes a bite of the confectionery like he'd just been discussing the weather in a particularly boring bout of small talk. 

Tommy flinches, voice cracking. "I thought they'd come and see me. Ghostbur told me everyone would want to come and see me..." 

The sugar turns to ash on his tongue. He abandons the dessert, the first bite instantly becoming the last, Tommy's words caught in the air like the lazy swirl of gulls in an updraft.

It's all a bit watered down, something too lonely, something a bit sad. It makes him remember why he never really ate, always too many tastes, too much imparted by the hands that made it. And Tommy's hands were laden with the sour echoes of self-hatred.

"Dream?" The voice is small, sounding more like a dejected sigh. 

He looks up, waiting for the rest of the question, but seeing the husk of it lying dead in Tommy's eyes, he realizes he's going to be forced to fill the gap.

"I don't know you can ask Wilbur--" _Ghostbur, it's Ghostbur now, Wilbur Soot is dead, he's dead. Remember? He's dead._ He doesn't correct himself. "He's the one who handed them out." 

"Where is Wilbur? Where is he-- where is Wilbur?" 

He can't tell if the kid is asking for his wayward brother or the imperfect ghost. One doesn't exist anymore, Tommy has to know that by now, ghosts were always difficult like that. 

"I…" He starts, eyes wandering across the horizon. "I don't know, I thought he was going to be here, too. I'm just as confused as you are. But... well, I'm sure next time you see him though, you can ask." 

He offers a smile, a placating hope as if there's a chance. As if he didn't leave the ghost there to melt in the pelting rain. 

Tommy let's his head fall with a thunk against the table, frustrated whine like a cornered animal leaving him. "And you're sure? Wait you're- you- hh-" 

The stop and start dissolves into a growl, Tommy sitting up, voice honed with a precise sharpness as he tries and fails to pick apart the doubts. "You're one hundred percent sure that _someone_ in that entire fuckin' kingdom got an invite?" 

The suspicion greets him with an unbidden shock of anger, a brand of it sunk into the cosmic grey matter of his mind, those boiling, fraying edges of his sense of self. His upper lip jumps slightly, pupils flashing preternaturally bright, and his silhouette seems to flicker against the outline of the air like a shadow out of place before it smoothes out into something soft and human. 

"Why do you care so much?" He narrows his eyes, slight and cat-like, white teeth caught on a treacherous grin, declarations of doubt injected along a confessional hook, line and sinker. "It's not like they want you anyway, Tommy. No one showed up to your party and _everyone_ was invited."

There's expectant silence, Tommy's head sunk back against the tabletop, harsh breaths like scoffs under his breath, fingers clutched in the unkempt strands of hair. 

"It doesn't fuckin' matter." Tommy mumbles, voice bubbling, hysterical. "… It doesn't matter does it?"

He sounds like Wilbur and when the kid lifts his head, he looks like him too.

Tommy sweeps his arms across the table without warning. Everything sent clattering against the other, hard work wasted in the fraction of a second. All of it upturned or cast into the sand, destroyed. 

The kid stands with shoulders heaving, panting harshly only to throw out his hand, fingers titled to form an expectant palm. "Give me your pickaxe. I know you have it." 

"Tommy, I don't think-"

"Just for a second Dream, please."

He manifests Nightmare, the weapon settled in its favored form of an axe blade, thrumming and sharp, echoing the tension in the air. 

Tommy could kill him, or at least get somewhere close. He could fuck everything up that he's worked so hard for. 

Tommy could do something stupid. 

Tommy could..... well, Tommy could do a lot of things.

Nightmare's blade shifts into the thin smile of a pickaxe. 

He hands it over, Tommy taking the weapon's weight with a grim set to his jaw. 

He follows the kid into the purple haze of the nether portal, hands in his pockets, mask back on his face.

-

It's only after he watches Tommy smash the obsidian bridge into the lava that he finds the opportunity to slip the metaphorical snare round his neck. 

Tommy really sets himself up for it, staring down at the compass in his left hand, Nightmare thrumming in his right, swinging down low by his calf. It's keen to destroy, but the kid just stops and stands and stares, and the pickaxe falls quiet. 

Tommy stares at that damn compass, the lava spitting and bubbling far below practically begging him to just throw it in, be done with it. 

"You know, I heard…" He starts, scuffing the heel of his boot against the netherrack, sniffing at the tickle of heat and smoke crowding his nose even behind the mask. "I heard that Tubbo burnt his."

"What- why are you-why're you saying--" Tommy stutters before finally picking up his scattered words. "You're lying."

He arches a brow. Eyes looking from the resistant glint in Tommy's to the way he's turned back towards him, Nightmare clutched tighter in hand, the weapon baying for something bloodier than smashed rock. 

He shoves his hands in his pockets and tilts his chin, a silent challenge. He dared the kid to try it. 

"You're lying." Tommy stalks towards him, the splitting soles of his shoes slapping the ground unevenly. The kid gets in his face, practically hurling the words. "what'd it say dickhead, if you actually saw it, what'd it say? Fuckin' tell me!"

"It said..." He holds the silence like a weapon.

The flash of hope in Tommy's eyes is mirrored only by the creaking tension.

"It said, _Your Tommy._ " 

Tommy stumbles back, a hand half curled into an unfinished fist, pressed to his sternum, pressed into the old mirage of something that is no longer there, just an old mirrored scar and scratched bones.

"Hf, I--" Tommy huffs and scoffs, casting the pickaxe at Dream's boots before pacing back and forth. 

Hands roughing up his hair in frustration, Tommy starts to slip into understanding. "He said- he... all along I should've known. No one cares. No one- _nobody_ fuckin cares."

Clutching the compass in both hands, Tommy watches it glint in the orange light, eyes awful and dead. "He burned it…"

Tommy looks up, desperation fogging up the blue of his eyes. "On purpose?" 

"I think so."

Tommy's eyes skate smoothly out to the lake of lava below, shadows tilting as the light catches differently. The hand holding the compass shakes, fingers adjusting their grip until he's practically spinning the compass in an agitated, pointless loop around his palm.

"Why don't you sleep on it, Tommy. Don't do anything you can't take back." He doesn't intend for the words to be condescending, but it's almost unavoidable at this point, like he's watching the frog finally realize the water is boiling and it's hard not to feel a sort of pettiness.

"I don't sleep anymore." 

Well, that was at least something they had in common. 

"It was…" Tommy continues on a frustrated sigh, heels rocking slightly before taking a step forward, and then another, and then he's completely bathed in the warm light cast up by the lava below. Peering right over the edge, he gives a laugh that's next to lifeless. "It was a stupid dream… just a stupid fuckin' dream." 

He doesn't echo the breathless laughter. He waits patiently amongst the blistering heat of the nether and feels a numbness creep frighteningly far up his arms, the static cling of the underworld crowding his eardrums. 

"You're my friend, right?" Tommy asks, angled just enough to look back at him, just enough to try and plaster on a smile like it's all he knows how to do. "You won't-- you won't fuckin' leave me too, yeah?" 

Swiping an arm over his scuffed up face, Tommy turns away. "Everyone's always betraying me, even fuckin' Ghostbur."

"I've always been on your side, Tommy." He speaks it like a truth, he speaks it with the conviction that he's never believed anything else even as history stands to contradict it. 

Tommy stares down at the lava below, orange eating up the blue of his eyes. Contemplation caught thick in the slightest downward tug of a frown, the fall of the kid's brow.

Everything hinges on Tommy's next words. Every second, of every time, of every instance that he had ever done anything that Tommy could consider a personal wrong flashes through his mind, the proper response for each loaded on his tongue.

Tommy nods, a sigh following as he stares down, seemingly unable to look away. "Yeah… you're right."

Back hunched and arms crossed, Tommy curls in on himself, looking like any other wounded animal desperately clinging to its own attempts at comfort.

He grins, a thing half broken by the uncertainty of a tight lipped frown when Tommy still doesn't step away from the edge.

"Tommy?"

"No, no. You're right." The words contain the collective gravity of a guillotine blade just before the drop.

And then Tommy is shuffling forwards not back, netherrack crumbling as he sways, compass reeled back as if to be thrown; as if his body can't decide if he was meant to toss it or himself over the edge. Maybe both. 

The world screeches, the very earth rumbling and creaking and protesting with a booming _wrong_ in Dream's ears.

He doesn't have time to think, the withering rot on his hands creeping up a bit higher--

He can't die. 

_He can't die._

He won't let him.

His frame flickers, one second too far away and the next too close as he hooks a hand in the back of Tommy's shirt.

He rips Tommy back from the edge, not caring if he chokes, all harsh and hard enough that the sound of threads splitting cuts the air. A startled yelp of a gasp twisted from Tommy's throat. 

He throws him back so hard the kid lands right on his ass, nearly going head over heels.

Surprise shaping Tommy's face, hands suddenly empty as the compass falls and bounces, left behind at the edge; 

Once.

Twice.

It wobbles and spins before plummeting right off.

He watches it fall, balanced almost precariously at the edge, the heat from the lava generating a wind strong enough to rock his balance.

He hears Tommy curse, spewing stutters and gasps, the sound of shoes scuffed against the ground. 

Angling his head, he's privy to Tommy scrambling forward, crawling and scurrying like some feral creature, belly first across the netherrack.

Torso hitting the hot rocks when his limbs refuse to coordinate, Tommy reaches down, reaches for that long gone compass like if he tries hard enough it will come back. 

It all goes too far when Tommy _keeps_ crawling until he's practically slithering right off the edge. Gravity ready to snag him in its claws and pull down.

He grabs under Tommy's arms and wrenches him back from the ledge, _again_ , like he's just a misbehaving child and in all actuality, that's what Tommy is. A squirming and shouting mess of unruly limbs, all flailing and kicking and screaming, trying to demand something that was not only stupid, but impossible. He couldn't want the compass that bad.

He couldn't want to die _that_ bad. 

Just to be safe, he drags Tommy back until there's more than enough solid ground between them and the dizzying drop to the lava below. He keeps going until he feels confident enough Tommy won't go jumping.

The whole time he's met with Tommy trying to twist and kick him, hands swinging to claw at any part that nails will reach, teeth flashing on curses so colorful that they could fill a new dictionary.

He lets Tommy go, less than gentle, and the kid drops like a sack of potatoes against the rocks. 

Of course, Tommy takes the newfound freedom as an opportunity to try and run. Emphasis on the try, because the kid doesn't even get fully vertical before he drives a boot into the back of Tommy's knee, cruel fingers hooked into the hollow of his collarbone. 

Tommy crumples, folding like wet paper and he only lets up his grip when he feels the thin bone start to give. 

The kid falls back, one hand catching himself on the netherrack, the other pressed tightly over bruised flesh and bone. Stuck staring up at him, face slack and pupils wide, Tommy's shoes scuff the ground like he wants to scoot back but can't quite get a grip.

Like somehow he's finally seen the frightening monster come crawling out from under the bed. _Boo._

He stares down, just waiting for Tommy to act out again.

The universe for its part in all of it, is mockingly quiet, some wounded and pissed off _thing._

He feels its anger in the creeping crawl of static up his arms, prickling and heavy about his head like some crown of thorns. A part of him understands he stepped over that cosmic line, feels it like the droning din of indecipherable voices, like the cast judgement of impossibly tall figures, with purple stars for eyes, despondent gazes burning five times hotter.

The stifled sound of a sob cuts through the accusatory notes of static and he tunes back into the hazy form of the present. 

It pisses him off more than it should, that Tommy won't stop looking towards the beckoning glow of lava. Arms hugging his legs, looking like he's curled as tightly into a ball as he could physically go and still he tries to make himself smaller, limbs shaking. 

He crouches down, getting on Tommy's level as he grabs him by either side of his arms, equal parts stern and comforting like he's some angry parent to an unruly kid at the fairgrounds.

One hand moving to brush Tommy's hair out of his face, he takes in how the kid's skin is matted with soot, all scratches and bruises and tears, some truly miserable sight. Still Tommy only flinches, refusing to look at him.

"Tommy, hey, hey-"

_"⌼̴̡̢̢̨̧̨̨̡̧̛͈̬̠̲̱͕̱͓̱͇̬̰̤̱̯̬̮̺̲͚̮̙̺̰͔͈̱͕̳̠̱̣̬͇͖͖̫̼͖̖̖̗̭̜̞͇͚͎͍̖̙̦̳̜͖̪̝̪͔̭͖͙̪̖̘̫̱̣̬̻̠̻̮̘̬̳͍̱͎̦͈͖͍̮̱̟̽͌̊͐̓͗̊̓̂̈́͒̒͜͜ͅṙ̴̢̨̡̧̢̧̡̙̠̪͈̰̙̯̬̣͍̫͖̲̖̤͍͙̮̦̬̘̫̼͚̼̯͇̞̳̮̲̘̜̳̪̫̖̱͇͈̼͍̭͉͖͕̯̱̹͙͍͔̗͈̫̣̦̲͍̝̘̻̎͆̇͛͛̀̉̅̑͑̐̏̃̎̈́͘̚̕͜͜ͅͅͅሁ̴̡̨̧̧̧̧̨̨̧̛͖͍̮̻̺̻̞̜̟͈͎̰̥̞̯̹̟̮̰̳̺̩̬̼̭̘͙̩̠̤̖̝̣͓͔͍̙͍͍̰̗̪̱̪̜̦̼̼̤̻͚̤͔̺̫̗̝̪͈̘̔̒̀̐͐͑͊̔̐̃̾̀̈́̈͊͌̈͋͐̈͊̈̈̐̔̈́̓̌̄̒̋͆͗̂̊̇̈͌̐̽̀̑͌͛̑̄̑͆̔̓͌͋̉̑̑̿͑͌̇̒͗̑̏̀͆̊̂̇͌̀͐̆̓͌̎͂̔̌̿̉̌͗͐̋̚̕̚͘̚̚̚͘͜͜͠͠͝͝͠͝ͅ╕̷̢̧̧̢̧̛̛̛̛̛̰̠̼̙͈̝̹̣͔͉͉͎̘̙̙̬̱͕̭̝̟̘̣͚̳̹̟̜̞́̈́͛̈́͗͐̈́̀̇̔͆̈͗̎̆̇͗̿͑̒̃̃͗͋͆̓̿̃̈́͂͒͂̉͊̈́̈́̃̾̑̈́̊̂͊̇̊̓̿̎̾̊̏̊̏͛̾̀̔̉̒̽̐̔͗̒̍̌̄̊̃͌̈́̾̓̓̐͛̈̐̈́̿̽̽̔̿̈́͊̂̏̕͘̕̕̕̕̚̚͜͝͠͝͝͝͝͠͝͠m̴̡̨̧̧̢͇̞̲̪̬̙̭̯͉̞͎̝̲̹̯͈͍̞̥̦̙̭̫̻̟͍̠̞̖̳͓̬͉̝͚̩͂͐͌̽̓̓͒̀͗̑̎̉͐͒̂̐̆̽̃̆̈́̏̓͑̎̏͌̃̀̿̓̾̾̅̏͆̀͐̌̒̏̈́̈́̉̀̃͋̒̈͒͒͘̕͘̚͜͜͜͝͠͝͝͝͝ͅͅ." Ș̵̢̬̬̻͙̠̥̫̯̬̯̘̻̊ǫ̴̼̠̘̣̑͛̿̏̈́̄̄͘m̵̛͇̘͓͉̥̲̽̔́̊̐̄̊̑͋͌̂̄͜ę̴̡̟̙̯̠̞̮̥̣͙̽̈̍͗̍̈́͊̐̚͝t̸̝̞͂̈́͗̽͗͑͒͘̚ḣ̵̜̰̠̋i̶̧̛̤̯̎̅͂̂̇͊̒̍̚n̶̨̟̱͈̔g̷̛̩̼̿͗̂̈́̕̕̚ ̶̺̖͚̱̮̼̝̘͖̘̽̑̄̍̾̽͆̌̌̽̏͠l̶̨̤͐̾̄̏͛ḯ̵͕̘̳̱̮̰̄̃̐̐ͅk̸͇̼̻̈́ȩ̷̘̹͙̘͚̜͎̅͗͛̍̍͜ ̴̛̤͍͕̈́͌ă̷̭̠̖̼͉̙̟̣͌̇͐̚͘ ̴̼̗̪̘̙̦͉̣̏̈́̊̔͑͂̓̇͛̈́̈́͗̚ȟ̷͈̈̍͛̾͐̊͘̚͝a̵͖̥͕̖͔̮̟̯̜͚͔͋̚͜ͅͅn̸̟̥̆̊̿̑̄́̽̕̕d̶̡̗̠̙̤͇̞̦̲͙̣͚̘̼̐̋̄̓̇̏͋͊͘͘͜͝ ̵̝̫̝͌̎̎͜g̴̢̢̠̞̙̲̫̔͜͜ŗ̸̡̗̤̖̤̣̞̘̓̊̆̇͝ả̵͕̹̞̫͍̺̠̖̙̖̱̯̓͗̽̏̕ͅb̷͓̟̭̜̓̈̊s̵͉̩̬̳̙̗̭̼͙̫̜̾͋̓̓͊͛̐̽͐̓̆̈́̕̕ ̷̡̜͉͔̮͖̭̮̠͒h̷̼̔̅̆ī̷̤̮͎̯̯̝̥͖̜̺̙̜̏̚s̵̬͓̺̺̺̮̍ ̵̢͚̬̲̝̟̫̻͚͓͉͊́̊̒̇̓͠c̶̪͖͖̭͛̿ḩ̴̧̖͔̱͇̱̝͎̞͖͍̝̉̂͛̐͊̓̀̔͐̆͒̕͜ͅi̵̢̧̲͙͈̘̻͕̬̝̔͝n̷͙͍̜͍͔͉̻̓͌̿̈́͑͂̐͂̈̚͝,̵̡̡̛͎̮̻̰̜̯̪̒͌͋͌̿̈́̑̕ ̸̩̞͈͖̱̎̂͐m̴͎̘͓̠͕͍̬͚̲͎͍̌͗̈́́̓̓͋̆a̸̡͆͒͋͋̒̈́͌̒̾̇͘͝d̴̡͙̞̳̯̘͙̪̈͗́̄̊̿͂̈́̋̍̓̑̚̕͜ȩ̴̭̘̮͓̖͉̩̞̂͌̚ͅ ̵̜̪̹̝̪̪͍̼͇̹̇̀̋̊͌̾̉́̒ͅǫ̷̡̱͈̥̠̩̱̩̹̅̂̃̒̆̏͑̂̔̕͝f̷̺̟̭̖̺̔͊̓͝ ̶͇̗̘̞͎͙͇̹̫̠̬͒͌̈́̋̂̈̒́̽́͘̕͝͝͝ͅs̵̨̨̰̻̗͕̤̙̙̲̦̼̾̾̿̓͐̇̃̍̅̆͐̇͝t̶̨̨̖̰̫̥̬̘̺͕̻͈̓̊̈́̈́̄̿̄̓̍̋̕͘͜͠a̵̡̜̳̠̭͕͑͊̊r̴͖̩̖̹̰͎͓̍̀s̴̡̩͎̯̼̳̪̺͔͈̥͖̻͋́̿̈́̉̍̔͋̈̈͊̽̄̇́ͅ,̷̧̗̣͍̫̦̖̫̻̾͋̈́͋͂͋̊̓ ̷͈͔̦͎̽a̴͙̻̣͈̣̠̻͖̓͌̂̆̑̋͌̕n̶̛͕̤̔͗͆̇͆͆͌̆͠d̴̛͚̫͓̝̺͈̻̂̂͐͒͛͑̉͊ ̸̡̛̋͗̋͗̽͛͌͐͜͠s̴̹̺͇̺̻͉͖̳̥̘̱̝̆̅͊̏͗̐́̈͆̚p̸̨̢̢͖̰̱̟͙͔̩̺̲̤̽͂̏͐̈̐̏̀̎͋̕͝ͅͅa̴͎̞͎͋̿̔̔̃̐̌͗̂͐̕ć̵̙͉͔̙͉̣̌̉̈͋͑̍͘̚ȅ̴̗͚̦̺̥͆͛̂͒̔̅̈̽͑̒̋͜,̵̢̨͉̖̾̈̂͒̆̂̊ ̵̨̧̧̡̰̮̺͕͕͎̬̓̒̊̈́̄͒ạ̷̣̃̓̈́͗̐͊̄̏̿̚͠n̸̡̫̟͓͈̪͍̹̘͇͂͋̉̋͜͠d̵̛͙͖̳̲̟̟͉͓̳͎̗̫̯̥̬̓̽͑̓̀́̚͝͝ ̷̨̟͉̗̩̣̱̳̼̥̊͂̓̓̊̅͜m̴̛̝̝̰̼͈̒̓̈̾͗̐͛̔̓̅̕ą̸̡̢̳̺̖̲̩̹̘̫̳̳͖͕̓̍̾̈́̅̌̾͂̃̄͘͝͠t̶̩̮̗͇̞͌̂t̸̺̥̬͙̪͛͒͂͝ẹ̵̽̂͒̕r̶̛͖̞͎̖̖̫͈̀̈́̃̏͌̎͒̌̐̃́͝,̶̧̧̟͓͉̣̞͙̭̤͍̖͐͒̑̾̓̔͘͜ ̴̡͍̦̗͖̭̰̦͕̳͇͖̦̖̐̽̋̏̈́͗͜t̸͇̱͍͔̮̻͇̭̗͖̣̖̣̞͒̈h̵̨̫̦̱̠̜̹̥̥̥̙̝͂́̌̌̈́͑͆ë̵̹̹̖̩ ̴̧̧̨̲̭̗̦̖̠̳̩̲̄̍̂͜͠s̴̨̡̙̮̬̠̤̝̥̖̟͕͈̪̺͛̈́̃͐̔͗͐͊̾̋̚͠p̴̨̳͔̝̈́͋̕̚a̸̛̛̛̙̞̍̈́̑̽̈́̾̏͑̓̚c̴̬̽̾̊͒̈́͛̐͆͝͝ę̴̧̪̲̱̥̪̗̹͂̑̈́̆̂͒̕͜͜ ̷̧̨̧̯̱̬̯͖̤͍̲̬̰͆͛̊̉̅͒͊̇̓b̵͓̺͒̽̂͐̋̇̇̎͋͒̌͝ẹ̷̢̛̙̮̦̮̇̈̽̋̈̆̓͋̃͑̋͘ţ̴͎͕̬͖͖̯͍̞̭̊̃̃͛̃̋͘̕͝ẃ̵̺͈͔̰̼̩̰͕̞͉̜͚͈̒̊̈́̒͌̽̉̍̈́͗͊̈́̕ȇ̸̛̠͇̐̅͆̐̇ę̵͇̱͖̫̽̈́͋̔͌͑͊͑͠n̴̠͖̻̯͖̽͋̾͂̈́̈̊̉͑͐́͠ ̴̡̢̨̨̟̜̺͎̟̰̑̂̊̓̓̓m̵̨̮͓̗̹̘̜̻̃͛͋̊̂̆̍͜͝ȍ̵̰̻͓̑́̍̓̊̏l̶̼̹͙̹͍̙̆̍̔̕͠e̶̡̪̭̩̦̟͈͎̩̻̿̌̿̏̂͌̿͌̍̏̈́͘c̴͓̲̜͕̲̼̯̰̩͆̑͒͜u̷͇͕̓̋͠͝l̵̨̙̰̫͚̥̜̗̭̬̇e̸̪̬̍̅̈́͗̋͘̚͘ͅş̵̩͛̈͆͆̉͆̏ ̴̧̛͓̳̩̜̦̞̟͔͚̟̾̾͋̓̔̋̐͘̚̕͜͠a̵̧̽̽̊̊̂͊͠͝͝n̴̢̛̥̱͈̟̩̺̖͋͌̊͆̄ͅḍ̵͍̲̠̪͖͕̠̹̙͉̬̰̼̅̔̀͆̄̎̈́͋̓́͑͒ͅ ̴̘͕̑̊͊́̍T̵̲̥̣̹̫̙̣̮̦̄͂̀̐͑̋͘͝h̵̛̅̈́̏͗̾̀͜͠ë̵̢͕̫͍̘̭̤͓̱̝̝̖͖̐͋́̓̋̈̚̚͝ÿ̷̼̻̻̣́͆́ ̸̛̛̲͎̭̹̝̺̟̑̉͌̿̇̂̾̀̅͊̔̽̕ŗ̵̞̤͔̱͚͙̖̬̬̦̜̊̇̅͜ͅͅȁ̷̡̜̱̮̫̜͈̳̱̤̙̭r̸̡̡̨̢̛̘̰̣͉̭̃̈́͊͌̓͊͑̏͐̃̏̈́͜͝͠ȩ̸͔͍̩͕̻̈̀̈́͝ͅl̶̢̠͕̳̝̙̓̽̔̃͑͛̏̒̿̚ͅy̵̛̪͚͓̰̬͔̬̫̫̫̞̣̘̦͊̋͊͋̋͑́̋͋̑̇̐͝ͅ ̷̨̧̗̯̦̠͙̜̙͔̐̋̌̈̉̇̕͝͝ͅf̶͇̭̗͔͓̗͈͈̝̋́̉̍̀̀̾̓̕͝ơ̸̡̛̮͎̤̜̱̱̻̦̞̆̎͂͑͂̆ŗ̸̢̧̧̛̳̱͇̞͇̗̭͎̩̥̿͆̏͊́͂̾̈́̃͑̃m̶̡̛͍̳̝͇̺̝̫͕͔̱͍͊͋̾̽͊̏̿̊͋̈̇̏̚͝ͅͅe̵̡̧̧̛̩̹̥̹̺̹̜̼͓̲̗͌̏͗̏d̷̡̛͕̹̣̰̣̯̻̼̽̅̃͊͑̔͋͆̽̈́̆̕͝ ̴̩̰̳̟̺̱͈͓̹̝͋̾͌h̷̺̻͚͚̖̟͒̐̌ã̵͙̩̬̖̩̰̹̲̺̖̩̉͋̈́̂̅̎̓͊͘̚͠͝͠ͅn̸̫̬͔̖̹̺̊͌̔͂͂̋̑̿͊͘ͅͅd̴̯́͑̽͌͘s̸̰̜̝͍̤̫͉͒͒͂̀̿̈́̚͘͘ ̴̜͕̠̩̥̺͑̽̍̌͆̏̏̒̈͐͘ṭ̷̡̻̲̰͉̙̺̈̈̐̅̓̉̕h̶̛̞̬̻̩͈̬͇̃͂̎͋̔̀̆͌̍̂̋̚͝ͅa̵̡̟̮̟̭̘͎͕̖̓̀̈́̌̈́̓͂͘t̵̮͖̮͓̥̘̭̮̎͆̇͗̚̚͝ ̶͕͇͈͛͂͒̓̒̒̃̑̿͒̑͝w̸̛̗͇̦̭͔̺͚͉̤̥̮̍͑̂̏͌̆̚͠e̷̼̞͓̙̺̱̯̋̉̈́̊r̶̢̥̝͍͉͕̆̌ȩ̵̗͓̹͈̝̱̗͎̰̫͕́ͅn̶̮͚̆̈̾͌͐̓̀̏͜'̸̢̡͚͈͙̩̤͔͙̖̤͙̼̙̾t̵͚͍̞̲̙͒́̾ ̶̧͐͐̈́̽̓͑̀̋̈̋͒̐͗̉͘ç̴̣̣̱̼͍̯̘͙̺̃̍̉͆̾̅̓̌͛̾̕̕͜͠l̶̛̛̘͈͓͎̱̻̄̽̌͠͝͝a̷̱̰̰͖̬͈̒̍͐̑̈́̏̽͘̕w̷͙̮͔̪͙͚̭̖̮̬̥̺̩̺̿͊̓̅̆̏͆͐̔͗͆ͅş̸̭̣̼̲͙̮̩̟̜͈̳̣͔͊̈̋͗̎̐͆̑̚͠.̴̼̪̤̟̾̀͒̇̈̒̌̉̎͋͐̌͘͝ ̴̩͔̣̙̦̳͔̘̭̳͔͎̏̍̔̚"̴̣͎͎̺̖̝̦͍̳̰̈́L̸̙͖̘̮͓͆̔͌͊̉̽̿͊͛͝ȉ̵̡̡͖̻͈̥͚͔̤̼̳̭͔̜̮ş̵̡̛̮̻̗̬͕̪̬̹͖̻͇͑̋̊̏̄t̵̲͈̲͈̰̝̝̎̈̾͘̕͜e̵͈̹͝n̵̨̡̠̦̲̳̔̓̾͆ ̵̝̯̠̜̝͐t̵̢̺͙̬͈͕̫̣̬̗͚́͑̄̏ȏ̷̬͙̥͇̯̮̲͚̻̙̰̠̫̽͌̿̆ͅ ̷̢̳̥̻̟̯̹͓̓͊͂̈́̓̕͠m̸̱̈́̃̿͌́́̌̊͋̏͝e̸̞̾̓͆̕."_

Tommy's eyes are distant, rolling like a scared rabbit, hands shoving against where Dream has a grip on his bicep, firm and bruising.

"Look at me." He tries again, words nearly slipping into an entirely different language.

Tommy's eyes dart towards him but then look away, still trying to pry his fingers off all whilst mumbling curses and weak insults between the sounds of breaths interrupted by half sobs.

He grabs Tommy's chin, shaking him a bit, molars gnashing, teeth bared and sharp behind the mask. _"Look at me."_

L̴̢͙͎̳͗̌̋͆̔̍̀̕̚͝ǒ̴͕̠̮͔̮̆̋̂̇̈́͒̌͌̌͒̔͊ö̵̹̙k̵̡̰̮̗̼̠͒̄̌̅͗̈̈́͊̊͊͝ ̸̬̎̍̃ã̶͇͚̈́̇̒̉̀̉̈́͐̍̕͝t̶͈̠̠̫͈͊̈́̈́̊͒̂̚̕ ̸̡̢̣̠͉͓̮̦͈̤̦̓̾͜m̴̡̨͙̤͖̠͇̭̭̞̑̌̏̈̐͛̇͊͑̾͗e̷̡̛͖̱̥̣͚̙̙̖͇̪͂̂̂̊͜͜ͅ.

_L̸͖̹̮͗̕͜ǫ̵̦̃̈́ͅơ̵̻̓k̸̦̋̅̾ ̷̧̣̰̐̍ä̷̭͔́͜t̵͍̹̫̄́̿͝ ̸̢̖̠͉̌͒̔̇m̷̡̰̘̖̍̿̆̈́ë̸̥́.̴͎̔̉"̸̠͋͗̌ͅ ̶̬̖̖̉̆͋Á̷͕͎ ̸͙̜̬̀̚̚h̵̨͍̬̆̇ạ̵͆͂̾͌n̸̢̗͖͋͗d̷̩̝̝̋ ̷͖͎̲̌̈́͘g̶̛͕̯͍r̸̋͐͐͌ͅĩ̶̙̽͊̅p̸͎̗̀͋͒͜s̷̝̩̠̈ ̵̨̼̅͊̿h̶̡͎̻̥̃ỉ̵̥̯̭̽ͅs̸̰̟̩̏̎̽ ̸́̒̈́͜c̴̥̫͙̳̑ȟ̷͎i̴̜͔͚͝ǹ̸̤̳̦̈́̈̒ ̷̧̛̙͌t̵̘̏̒͝ị̶͉̿̈g̶̡̦̈́h̵͚̻̰͒͌t̵̮̬̏̾ë̵̢̨̙̞́r̷̢̳͈͑̋̀.̴̗̬̐͆̈́̑͜ ̶̪̔̉"̸̲̦́͐͠L̸̘̔͒ŏ̵̢̘͕̏̽͜͠ő̴̻̩͌k̵̦̬̪͊ ̸͉̎a̸̖̙͈͖͊ẗ̴̛̳̘͗ ̶̗͖̐̄͊͜ṃ̶̅̈è̶͉͓̱̩̐,̵̩̹̬͔̀̑̉⌼̴̡̢̢̨̧̨̨̡̧̛͈̬̠̲̱͕̱͓̱͇̬̰̤̱̯̬̮̺̲͚̮̙̺̰͔͈̱͕̳̠̱̣̬͇͖͖̫̼͖̖̖̗̭̜̞͇͚͎͍̖̙̦̳̜͖̪̝̪͔̭͖͙̪̖̘̫̱̣̬̻̠̻̮̘̬̳͍̱͎̦͈͖͍̮̱̟̽͌̊͐̓͗̊̓̂̈́͒̒͜͜ͅṙ̴̢̨̡̧̢̧̡̙̠̪͈̰̙̯̬̣͍̫͖̲̖̤͍͙̮̦̬̘̫̼͚̼̯͇̞̳̮̲̘̜̳̪̫̖̱͇͈̼͍̭͉͖͕̯̱̹͙͍͔̗͈̫̣̦̲͍̝̘̻̎͆̇͛͛̀̉̅̑͑̐̏̃̎̈́͘̚̕͜͜ͅͅͅሁ̴̡̨̧̧̧̧̨̨̧̛͖͍̮̻̺̻̞̜̟͈͎̰̥̞̯̹̟̮̰̳̺̩̬̼̭̘͙̩̠̤̖̝̣͓͔͍̙͍͍̰̗̪̱̪̜̦̼̼̤̻͚̤͔̺̫̗̝̪͈̘̔̒̀̐͐͑͊̔̐̃̾̀̈́̈͊͌̈͋͐̈͊̈̈̐̔̈́̓̌̄̒̋͆͗̂̊̇̈͌̐̽̀̑͌͛̑̄̑͆̔̓͌͋̉̑̑̿͑͌̇̒͗̑̏̀͆̊̂̇͌̀͐̆̓͌̎͂̔̌̿̉̌͗͐̋̚̕̚͘̚̚̚͘͜͜͠͠͝͝͠͝ͅ╕̷̢̧̧̢̧̛̛̛̛̛̰̠̼̙͈̝̹̣͔͉͉͎̘̙̙̬̱͕̭̝̟̘̣͚̳̹̟̜̞́̈́͛̈́͗͐̈́̀̇̔͆̈͗̎̆̇͗̿͑̒̃̃͗͋͆̓̿̃̈́͂͒͂̉͊̈́̈́̃̾̑̈́̊̂͊̇̊̓̿̎̾̊̏̊̏͛̾̀̔̉̒̽̐̔͗̒̍̌̄̊̃͌̈́̾̓̓̐͛̈̐̈́̿̽̽̔̿̈́͊̂̏̕͘̕̕̕̕̚̚͜͝͠͝͝͝͝͠͝͠m̴̡̨̧̧̢͇̞̲̪̬̙̭̯͉̞͎̝̲̹̯͈͍̞̥̦̙̭̫̻̟͍̠̞̖̳͓̬͉̝͚̩͂͐͌̽̓̓͒̀͗̑̎̉͐͒̂̐̆̽̃̆̈́̏̓͑̎̏͌̃̀̿̓̾̾̅̏͆̀͐̌̒̏̈́̈́̉̀̃͋̒̈͒͒͘̕͘̚͜͜͜͝͠͝͝͝͝ͅͅ,̶̡̙̋̊̂̒ ̶̧̟͑̄̐͠w̷̛̥̆̃h̸͍̓̓͒ÿ̸̧̠͌̔͝ ̷̟̎w̶͓͕̰̋͝ǫ̶̙̮͘ͅu̷̟͍͔̳͑̆̅͂l̴̲̖̔̽̑̽ḑ̴̝̳̔ ̵̨͚͊̿y̶͈͎̹̺̅̉̐̕ọ̶̩̆u̵̧͈̠̻͒ ̸̳̼̗̄͠d̴̖̝̖̾o̷̟̗̒̆ ̸̬͑̈́t̴͔͌͂͛h̵͈͇̹͑̏͜a̴̤͚̮͂̚ṱ̵͋̐?̶̧͖̌͋̿́"̶̣̐̆͒͂ ̴̨̤̣̍̃T̷͕̙̕h̸̡͕̖̒͐̀ẹ̷̛̮͕̔̋͜ȳ̵͎͇̆͑ ̷̹̆̽͗̉ã̵͎͋s̶̰̜͇̋̽k̶͇͓̻͍͋͌̚ ̴̣̮̪̟̈͠ȁ̶͙̙͈̣n̴̨̨̧͎͗͗d̸̼̮̩͘ ̶̙̿h̴͇͓͂e̵͍̟̅͑̆̅ ̸͔̙͊̄d̸̪͈͓̽͜o̵̡͖͓̙̾̕e̷̥̮̿͊̚͠s̵̡̹̟̄̈́͘͜n̶͚͍̝͎̐̋̌'̶͚̹̬̓͑ͅţ̸̮͈̍͛ ̷̢̥̰̏r̵̺̘͖̬̄̈́̚e̶͇̹͆̚m̷͉͍͕̌e̸͍̔̋m̵͍͓̃̽b̴̧̩̹͍̄̈͋͝ḙ̸͂̓̚r̴̨̺̍̒,̶̹̜̐̇ ̶͈̦̗̄ḫ̴͈͒́ë̶̥̺́̋͌͊ ̸̤̼̝̯́͌d̷̥͔̑̉͘o̸̳͓͆͛̆ë̸̩̬̮͙̚͠s̶̱͓̓n̴̨̟̟̖̆͑̿̉'̵̙̬͚̙͑͗t̷̗͓̦͇̿́͒͛ ̴̠̋ŕ̸̝̄ë̸̛̝́͝m̵͈̋̾̑̄e̵̟͓͑̽̎͘m̶̱̮̓͂b̴̙̻̠͕͠e̶̳͙̖̜͑r̴͔̉,̷̻̰͖̽͠ ̵̝͉̘̼̅w̷̞͋̄ḧ̸͚̹̙́y̴̦͇̑̊̃͝ ̸̧̥͕̃̓͗͝d̸̜͚̠̅͛͌õ̵̜̳͚̦ë̷̹̺̞́̀͠s̴̢̙̤̬͋n̶͎̥͓̂'̸̮̭̎̐t̸͎̒͘͝ ̵̩̣͖͘h̶͓͇͔̍e̵̮̎̂͜͝ ̴͙̿r̸̪̠̒́e̵̳͋̎̉̉m̴̘̖̜̆̈́e̸̫̮̫͜͝͝m̶̪̰̞̦̀b̵̧͎͚̫͊͑̇̍ë̵̘̼̠́̈͝r̴͚̻͚̫̃͝,̷͙̝̩͛̽ ̶̡̩̩̆̊̌Ť̴̜̝̃̓͆ͅh̶̫͆͑͊ȅ̴̲͕̝͜ẙ̴̩̠ ̸̰̼͉̅̈́h̴͕̏̉̋o̶̡͉͉̓̇͆l̴̢͔͈̰̈́̕͝d̷̝̞͂̓̍͒ͅ ̸̖͕̥h̴̟̔̌̾͋i̴̧͈̲͓͋͠m̶̹̺͂ ̴̩͑̈́t̷̡̜̬͒ḩ̵͎͋̉̿e̵͍̓͂͆ŗ̸́̾e̴̪͉̻͍̅̂̏͝ ̴̭̬̝͂d̴͔̗͇͊͘e̵̜̾̓̉m̸̺̬̀͘ä̵̝̟̲́̐n̶͕͎̤̈̊̉d̴̜̹̺̽͜i̴̥̓̅͘n̸̢̦͙g̸͍̻͓̓̉ ̶̧̻̱͂̋̚h̶͙̖̞͗̉̾i̶͔̮̖̔š̶͕͙͗͆ ̶͎̀̒a̴̖͊ţ̶͎͌̒t̷̩̰̬̎̏̕e̸̲͕̤̿͗n̷̢̝͉̠̕ẗ̵̤͎̺́̈i̵̲̅̇̆o̸̭̳̒̚n̵̘̳̂ ̴̰͓͉̣̂̾̋͌ạ̸̢̙͛̿͜n̴̛̛̟̽̍ḑ̵̅͂͑͘ ̵̪̼̝̱̉̓̋ḣ̶̜͜ȇ̴̼͙̝̝̇͊ ̶͉͉̩͗ǎ̶̢l̸̞̝̇̓̿ẃ̸̙̏̏̅â̴͉͝y̶͈͎͂s̵͕͈̠̈́̉͝ ̸̙́h̵̪͎̜͒̕a̷̺͓̭͊t̷͉͓̗̻̄͊̍͠e̶͇̠̔̄̋̌d̸͈́̅̏̌ ̷̫͕̅̍͝l̶͎̩̠͠͝͠͝ỏ̷̬̦̎͘ͅo̵͍͎̭̿̍͑̈́k̵̤̬̍͊̏i̵̭̖̦̺͆͂͠n̴̨̞̠̰͋͆g̸͖̐͐ ̴̢̮̙̇̐̈ĭ̷̙̈́ͅṇ̶͗̎ ̵̹͇͝T̴̼͗h̸̩̾̍̾̓ͅe̶͉͗̇i̷̬͊̅͗r̵̛̝̪ ̴̢̮̓̈́e̷̗̓y̵̤͔̋e̸̛͙̿͠ͅs̵̼̑͛͝͝.̸̐̍͜͠ ̴̘̤͎̂̀Ṡ̸͉̠͉̘ȏ̵̦̝͔̅͆̕ ̷̯̾͘͝ͅĥ̴̲̕ë̸̞̥̪̖̌ ̶̘̘̙́͛c̵̳͔̣̄l̶̫͖̆͒o̸̭̪͇̤͑̃š̶ͅͅe̷̝̹̔̾s̵̡͉̤̪͊̏͊ ̴̭̣̈́ͅh̴̹͗̍i̴̦̙̪̊̇̏̀s̷̢̫̈́͠,̶̫̮̈́ ̶͙̆̅͂ͅä̷̱̞́l̵̪̰͔̏̃̈́w̴̼̦̤͌̑͝a̵̺͙̺̓͋͜y̵̭͈͑̈́ş̶̨̮̝͊̎ ̶̲̳̠̚p̶̲͈̎͋͆͒ā̴͙r̸̘̮̯̋ä̸͇͖͠l̸̤̯̹͂ÿ̶͈̩́̆̊z̵̧͈̽̏͘͠e̵̱͐͠d̶͙͓̩̫͌̽̔͝,̷̠̜̳͗ ̵̧̉̽̐͆a̷̩͝ ̸͉͕͛̅g̶̯̠̀̒͒̇ḩ̸̛̟͔̯̃̉͋ő̷̺͔̯̰s̸̗̭͚͎͋̿̀ț̵̢̣̽͛͘͠ ̴̯̫͓͙̍o̴̡̟̪̠̊͐f̵͓̼͓͇ ̶̺̐̍̚b̴̝͆̽͘ŗ̶͚̱͈̒́̊ì̷̺g̴̨̦̈͜ȟ̴̝̙̖͐t̷̹͓̳̘ ̷̨̰̃͂͆ȅ̵̢͍ͅŷ̸͓̠̲̍̎̈e̴̢͓̺̾̍̈s̸̢͓͖̎͛͋ ̸̗̑̄̉͗c̵̤̗͙͑̓̑̕ā̶̦̳̺̈͛ȗ̵̟̐g̴̙̱̥̀̂h̷̤̖̹̪͐t̷̬͔͎̝̊ ̸͙̏ș̵͙͒̅͘h̷͕͔̿͑i̴̢̖̊̊n̸̬͔͓͈͑͌̾͝i̷̪͂̒̕ñ̴̗̰̠͑g̸͙̮̉̈́ ̵͖̯̘͆͆i̵̳̚n̴̩̫̽͂̃̕͜ ̶̜̫̈̂̓̊t̶̘̳̀h̶͈̥̐͒̓̓e̵̡̖̲͆̔ ̴̪͔̼̒͊̂d̷̟̻̑͋͜a̷͎͒̃̕r̸̨̰̠k̶̩͚̇͑̏.̷͓̈́ ̶͚̄̕"̷̨̗̉͆Ḯ̵̟̺̓̏̃ ̶̧̂͊̂̍d̸̺͐̿͝o̶̺͜n̵̟̞̄̎̉'̸͉͍̩͋̈́̽̒ť̶̡̹͇̯̑̔̅ ̵͙͙͕͖͂͊̑k̴̛̛̜̯̊͊ṅ̷̻̭̽͗ỏ̴͚̄̚ẅ̵̡͇̬̬.̶̥͍̹̂ ̸̮̹̓̾͌͒Ī̷̤̍̈̅ ̴̲̟̳̓ḋ̴͓̬̇͝ȍ̶̡̲̼̺n̵̜̯̻̬̾̈́́̈'̴̧̅t̵̘͉͙͊́ ̸͔̳̍k̸̨̭̺̿̔͝n̸̙̱͇̐o̸̫̺̰͗͑̅͝w̷͍̹͘ͅ.̴̢͎̫͗͂ ̶̧̝̬̝̏I̸̭̗̒̀ ̷̗͘ͅd̵̡̿i̸̪̔̐̓d̸̳̘̀͋n̵̖̂́'̷̦̀ţ̶̰̿͐͋̑-̸̺̽̀̊͜ͅ ̷͎̞̰̱͒͊Ị̴̫͒̽̍͝ ̵̛̦̲̕d̷̜̓͛͛ĭ̶̙̽͘d̴̥͉̾͒n̸̙̽'̸̘̠̾̎̋t̵̩͈̰͊͒̀ ̸̢̮̺̝̏͐w̸̡̌̐ͅă̴̗̔n̷̹̮͈͋̽t̴̡̙͔̦͘ ̶̹̬̖͕͑͑͝ṯ̶̦͎̐̑͘h̷̫͙̠̓̽͂ē̶̳͆m̵̱͈̈́̍̆͝ ̷̪̭̠̃̈́̊t̶̡͎̼̄̐ȯ̴͇͑̒͛ ̸̙͍͕̍͜ḑ̶̪̿͐͋͑ḭ̸̢̚e̵̟͋̕.̸̧̲̔̈́̕"̶͙̀̉̓̓ ̸̢̞̭͂̓̓̕͜T̵̹̀̐h̷̬͝e̴̯͊̓͝y̸͍͛̆̈́͌ ̵̜̓͗ş̶̯̒̽͋͜i̴͈̠̗̤̿̾g̸̜̭͛̽̀͘h̸̡̹͑,̸̢͚̉ ̸̡̝̌̓̚l̴̳̙o̵̟̯̎͝n̷͓͇̰̮͆̾́g̶̦̝̑̏̐ ̸̫̂̏͗a̴̻͈͓͕̾́̈́n̸̟̮̫̆d̸̠͖͍͎̒̽͐ ̴̞̽͋̇̈́ļ̵̗̈́̎̇͘o̶̧̱̥̍̍̓͊w̴̨̔͑̎͋,̷̮͊͆ ̶̯͓̫̑ḑ̶̗̞̊ę̷̞͎̆͘e̴̱͈̣̼̊p̷̭̅̊̇͝ ̸̛̤͘l̵̤͇̺̄̃ḯ̶͓͂k̴͈̝̜̀̓̋͝e̴͔͚̹̓̀͑ ̵̻̇͑t̶͔̱̺̭͌́͘h̵͔͇͘ḛ̵̙͊́ ̷̡̯̥̝̐b̸̝̆̐̕͜r̸̭͔͓͋͝͝e̸̺̣͑̔͝a̷̹͕͓̋ṯ̴̿̂͆h̶̙͓͘ ̵̟͑̀̇ọ̵͋f̵̠̅̓ ̴͚̩̏̀͑̕ȃ̵̧̛̤̬̽ ̸̭͈̻̍͗̿͠d̸͈̒̑̓y̵̢̞̩̓́̅͋ͅi̵̗̒͝ņ̶̛̻͎g̴̩̀̋̐̔ ̷̘̊͌̓͠ş̵̳̱͚̓͒ư̴̭̞̮̿̂͠ͅņ̴͓̲̤̾͘,̶̧̗̫͖͗ ̸͍̙̟̯̐a̴̳͗͘n̴̼̮̉̂͘͘͜d̴̬̮͇̪̍̽̈ ̵̥͍͊̏́t̴̢̤͠ḧ̶̯͖͂͝e̵̼͊̓̓̂y̵̡̦̱͉͂̕ ̷̭̮̩̠̏̽̆͘l̴͍̰̾̐ȩ̴͚͇͙̊̌t̴̨̙̻̟̃ ̸͙̲͎̥̾h̵̦̥̣̠̄i̵͚̾m̶̠͝ ̵͕̲͉͗̿͆ǵ̵̪̯ͅo̵̧̡̾̕͜ ̴̞̈͜b̸͕̥̽͒ú̴̝̎t̴͔̼̜̍̚ ̵̺̰̱̃̕h̴̻͆̔ȇ̷̟̜̰̰ ̵̢̘͛̄̓͠ŝ̴͎̙̹͔̓́ț̵̭̙͉̔i̵̪l̶̮͈̈̋̊͜l̵͎̏͊̆̕͜ ̸̰̌̂c̴̤͙̫͑̊͊͊ͅa̴̼͉̙̗͝ņ̸̳̮̘̇̿͝'̷̦̹͇̼̐̎̿͒ẗ̸̢́̃̕ ̵̠̩̄ͅl̴̨̘͈͈̈̄͝e̸̥̬̎̆a̸̛̫̖̪̯͒̒v̵̭̥̎̂̒̚e̴̥͋̐͛͝,̶̫̀͘ ̸̠́̓ṱ̸͚̩̰̋̀̃͊ĥ̵̬̩e̵̗̳͕͓͛̇̑r̵̛̥ḛ̸͑̌'̸̲͓̈́s̴͓̉̒͆͝ ̵͚̼̭̃̊ṅ̴̛̙͎̒e̶̛̗͍̋̒̆v̷̮̹̘̦͋e̷̮̭̟͎͗r̴̰̍̈́̽ ̴̛͇̼̊͝a̷̧̞͈̋n̵̖̲̗̠͊̊͝ẏ̷̞̣̎̉̔w̶͓̫̞̮͐h̵̛̙͓͚͊̍ẹ̴̪̃̿r̶̤̤̖̃̿̑̈́e̷̺͙͎̽̄̾͊ ̷̧̖̣͆̕͜t̸͚͌̌̇̏ō̸̪͙̚ ̷̠̐r̷͙̲̜̥̓͛̕u̷͍͋͂̋ͅn̸̛̝̆͝ͅ.̴̠̠̚͠ ̷̨̻̦̘̈́͑͗͝"̸̙̭̭̌ͅȲ̸̧̩̩͜o̴̭̓̔u̷̝̔̈́̕ ̸̡̻̘̥̑͑c̵̢̠̅̀̈́a̵͔̕ň̴̡̛͍̹̲͂n̵̗̅̄͜ỏ̷̺͙͖͘t̶̯́̌͠ ̶͇̖͙̱̑͂i̸̺̒n̵̖͕͈͗t̴̩̭̂͝ḙ̵̳̈́̈́r̵̰̃̂͗̾ḟ̴ͅē̵̹͉r̴͈̮̽ͅë̴̟̯́͘̚.̵͇̌̿̈́͜͝ ̸̧͙͓̠͗̊̑Ý̵̐̃͜o̵̘̭̰̍u̷̼̻̎̐̐ ̷̨̠̝͈̈́͐͗̃k̶̩̈̾͝n̴̫̓o̵̯̘̹̪͆̓̚͝w̶̰̲͂͌̉ ̶͕̒̈̎i̷̢̭̅ṫ̸̯̼͕ ̷̠̹̌̓̑ẃ̸͍̤̙̕i̴̢͗͘͜l̸̝̖̝̰̓l̵͇̙͋͆ ̶̙̎͌͆͂k̷͈̹̳̠͆͋̇̕i̷̢͓̠̒̈̍̄l̴͍̃͌͛͝l̸̝̤͍̙̊̒ ̸̗̦̫͛͜y̶͕̰̌ō̴̫̳̪̽̉ͅư̴̮͊̄.̴̥̗̱͍̍̓̋"̵̨̏ ̵͔̖̿̎T̵͕̻̉̋ḧ̵̲̫ȅ̷̛̯͇̤i̶̫̥̻r̵̜̠͇̘ ̵̛̺͖̭̮̋̾̃v̵̧̿̊͠͠o̷̬̬͂ḭ̷̖̺͘c̴͎͈͠ę̷̅͗̕͠ ̷̟͔̤̪͛͑̿i̶̛̩͊̕s̸͉̋ ̴͈͈̱̏͠r̴̹͔̬̋̎̂́o̷̘̦͒͑͂̉u̸̩̫̓g̵̡̛̣̲̽̾̈́ḧ̶͇͕́͛ ̵̟̗̬̦̃̎â̴̪̦̐n̸̗̹̑d̴̫̹̐̄̇ ̵̨̰̪͓̔͘h̵͙̿̈̓o̷̼̫l̸̘̊l̷͇̂o̴̼͌̅̋w̸͚̆̄̏,̴̧͎̤̅ͅ ̴̮̼̒̈s̶͇̘̲͆h̶̙̙̰̓̅ä̷̜͎̻̜́͗͠p̸̧͎͎̐͌͘e̸͙̖̍d̴͕͌͋ ̷͔̍̽̿l̷͕̝͚̮̈́̅̚i̴̫̤̩͋̾̕k̴͎̞͂͂e̴̤̯̟̊͊ ̴̢͍̲̑͂ť̶̫̤̠̄h̸͈̜̿̋̈́e̴̡͊̎̎ ̶̢͕̦̓̓̾̂c̵̡̓̍̓͘ř̵̙ȁ̵̩̤͖̓̊t̵̲̞̘̀͘e̷͙̣͉̽r̵̟̭̼̰̔s̶͙̦̟̱̾͐͘ ̸̭̠͒f̶͓͝r̴̙̮͕͊̇o̷͉̦̳͈͋͂̎͘m̸̪̪͛̿ ̸̺̝̹͚̾͘a̷̧̛̫̠̰͒̒̈n̴̻ ̵̱̭̋a̷̛̹͚̣n̷͉̏̐̈́̈́c̴̛̻̍̈́̄í̶̫ẹ̸̌n̸̠̓ẗ̵͕͕ ̶̘̺̯̀̓̉̀a̸̧̧̠͈͌̋̚s̴̛̮̝͇̭̊̿t̷̛̹͉̹e̸̮̯̿̚͝r̶̰̹̺̝̽̍̉͘o̴̟̩͇̅̌̏̚i̴̧͇̱͒̈́̏d̴̢̧̟̖̐̓̀.̵͓̗͉̅̉ ̶̦̗̼̮̅̋"̵͙̘͕̔̊̔͠T̴̮̔h̵̡͉̓e̸̦̪̯͌͌ý̷̜͕̬̚ ̷̗̗̥̐̈́̋͘w̸̺̝͛͜ḯ̴̼̦̽̚l̸͙̝̹̱̇̈́́l̸̫͖̲̉̈́̏̎ ̷̼̼̒̈k̴̛͇͙̝̼̄̕i̷̱̩͛̋̐̚͜l̵͗͜l̸͚͕̳̙͛̄͘ ̷̘̳́y̶̥̌̉̚͝ǒ̴̟̺͊̓u̶̥͋̒.̶̩̠͉͌̉"̸̬̩̿̿̔͜ͅ ̵͉̹̹͗͊̄͑H̸̨̱̺̄̃̒ẽ̷͉̺̗ͅ ̷̗͚̑͐c̴͕̜̈́̏ų̶̢̫̤͑̎r̷̯̩̾͆͘l̶͍̝͕̒s̷̥͑̔ ̵̹̗̂͋t̷̡̘̿̓̕͠i̷͇̹̒̃̆̌ḡ̶͉̦͐h̵̰͓̆̃̊t̶̰͕̫̩́e̶͚͎͔̮̋̏̈́r̵̹̯̄̄͗͘,̷͓͖̯̩̀̍̽͝ ̶̠̜̹̩͂̀̿̐ě̶̯̮̈́̎ạ̴̈́͒r̴͚̰͌̔̽͂s̸͖̭̎̅͗ ̸͔͓̀̀̽̃s̷͔̋ę̷̪͉̬̍̈̓͝ṭ̴͓̹̌̌ͅ ̷̧̩̖͂͊̑b̴̝͒ą̶͍̲̬̂c̸̦̎k̵͓͍̅͒ͅ,̵̣̏̊ ̴̯͉͇̋̆͒t̷͖̱̜̃ẻ̷̹̐ę̶̫͍̇̔̕͝t̶̮͇̔ĥ̷̞̘̦̠ ̴̼̓̚ḇ̶͚̈́̿̈́͛ả̶̳̉̃ȑ̵̨̺̯̠͒̆̈e̷̤̙͐̄͝d̶̪̣͝,̴̖͕̩̿̑͠ ̴̡̬̜̳̋͝t̸̳̊̈́̃ř̶̨͆̅̇ͅy̷̲͔̖͍͊̏̓̈́ĩ̷̫̹̭̚͜n̴̛̜̭̆g̴̫̙͌̏ ̸̹t̷̢̹̟̅͜o̶̯̞͌͜ ̶̖̲̀ẉ̸̐ŗ̵̤̲͋͜͠ä̸̻̣́̽͊̕p̵̨͓͕̽̾ ̸̟͔̳͝h̷̛͙̽͘i̷̲̳̕ş̷̜̔ ̵̡̄͋̄͠ͅṯ̴͊̔̊̅o̸̧̝̱̩̓͆̓͘n̸̞̟̝̩̒̓̓͝g̴̭͔̙̈́̄̂u̴̦͇̔̔̈̽e̷̓͛͑̚ͅ ̵͖̆͆̓å̴̠̦̅ř̸̡͈̤̟̐̓͝o̵̼̺͉̤͋̊̉ǘ̶̬͉̙̜͒̾n̷̢̼͈͈̈́̋d̸̥͖̿̾͠ ̶̨̤̓̓͘a̶̠̙̖̤̓̂ ̸̟l̷̞̅̓ą̸͍̆͌̓̈́ň̶̡͖̪ǵ̵̺̯ü̵͉̣̼͑̅â̵̛͍̚g̶̤̰̘͒̽ȩ̶͎̈͠ ̶̩͇̣̃͜͠ơ̷͉͍͐̚͝u̴̢͙͖͂͌t̸͍͔̂s̸̛͍͖̈́́̍i̷̳͕͓͍̿̀̐̚d̵͍̋̌͋ė̷̲͔͈̟̇̍ ̶̹̑̓̕f̸͓̼͓͜͝l̴͙̑͘͝e̵̹͓̓̈̌͘s̸̮̠̏̈̀ͅh̴͉̲͉̓ ̵͖̈̍̌ȁ̸̧͈͇̇n̵̖̼̫̟͛̆̑͗d̸̙̞͍̜̓ ̸̗̎͐͆b̴̘̑́͘o̴̟̬̖͛̑̆n̴̘͝e̵͕͗͝ ̸̪͑a̸̡̼̋̉n̵͙̊̿d̸̰͒͜͠ ̷̺͘̕s̸̰͌̈̃͌ớ̶͇̰̊͠m̵̫̍e̸̛͔̮͜t̵̟͈̏̓̿͠h̸̢͙͓̑̾͑ì̷̮̺̈́́ń̶̟g̷̣̳̤͝ ̶̜͙̗͐̍̾ṯ̸͓̙̯́̈́̑͝ḧ̸̹̱́̌͂͝ã̶̻̱̔̎̌t̴̹̹̬̣̽͗̿ ̸͔̩̓̅͆̿͜h̶̛̼̰͕̓̉̓a̸͍͐d̵̮̺̟͊ ̴͚͍̭͈͛͆͠n̸̼͔͌̂o̵̧̘̍̚ ̵̰̼̘͆͗̚r̶̨̖͊̚͜e̴̢̩͘a̶͠ͅl̶̤̾́̑̔ ̷͎̳̻͍̋̒s̴̛̲͍̺̰̿̾̽ö̵̹́̔͗̚ù̶͕̘̓̒̑ñ̸̼̥d̵͉̼̈́͘.̶̬̦̼̃̕ͅ ̵͙̈̆͘"̵̪̞̹̫͌̉͌̕I̸͖͆͒̎̿ ̶͔̪̞̜̃͠ḍ̸̩͕̅̈̏õ̸̡̍̕͜͝n̶̩̭̟̼͌̽͒'̵͙̽t̶̢͖̬͜͝.̵̨̧̞͓͝.̵͖͌͊͐͒.̵̡̛̥͆̔̚ ̴͖͙͍͐̆I̴̛̪ ̴̽͌̒͜d̴͍͐̉i̴͍̳̘̳̊͐͠d̷̟͙͕̜̐͐̽n̵͓̖̉̃͑͗'̴͇̗̰̎͊ţ̷̡͓̳̇̇-̴̲͍̚ ̴̢͓͐͗̚i̸͈̘̤̒t̷̪̘͍̒̆̆'̸̘͉͐͌̾s̶̠̦̹̗͒̈ ̴͉̱͓̾̈́̈́̕n̵̗͗͌̒ő̷̤͗͂t̴͖͌̓ ̸̙̓̆̚f̸̻̺͎͗̅̚ͅă̸̤̼̟̠͗̿i̵̡̞̱̤̊̒r̵̛̼̬̲̊̔.̷͍͛͆͠͝"̸͖̈́̽̾ ̸͔̥̪̋͒̄H̷̡̱̖͉͗͝e̷̖͆̆͂̑ ̶͚̔̈̆̀c̵̨̛͈̱̲̄̈́͑ä̴͕́n̵̖͍̭͌'̷̗̀̿̉t̶̮̺̝̀̂̂̉ͅ ̶͇̦̘̾̍r̶̟̦̆̓̕͘e̷̢̱͐̿m̵̺̞͚̦͐̀̏ê̶͓̘̳̂̆m̴͙͇͎̱̉̊b̷̨̛͖͇̐̇͝ë̶͚̪̠̝́͌͛r̷̭̳͎͗̌ ̶̜̘̰̉w̴̳̎h̴͙͑̎y̶̛̠̗͓̝̐͛͠.̷͔͔͑́ ̶̢͈̈́T̴̯̲̆͐̿ẖ̶̦̔͆̃e̴̬̊ÿ̷̮̲ ̷̢̫̲̪̒́s̸͚͛̄́͜t̴̲̪̆̀͑͘ͅä̷͖͔̣̻́͊r̵̼͉͛e̵̪̗̼̮̊͑̂̓ ̶̰̒̎̚͜d̸̼̖̝̝͛ò̵͉͑̄w̴͓̳̦̥͑̉̚n̶̮̫̟̟̿͝͝ ̸̜̼̦̒͋a̷̺̻̽͒͜t̴̲͙̽̾͒͐ ̶͎̲̈́̾̕ȟ̵̦̮͓̱͠ȉ̵̭̜͍̑͛̎m̵̙̣̫̈̈͘,̶̻̙͕̿̕ ̴̡͉͇̅̌̀́͜d̶̢͙̗̊̂̕͝i̵̱̝̫͆̓͗̃s̵̞͕̳͑t̸̝͉̘͚͝a̸̡̮̮͓͊̂̏͠n̴̢͉͕͌t̷̟̗̩̋̕ ̶̹͈̀ą̵̭̩̣̈́n̵͚̭͋̂̂́ḋ̷̯̫̹̠ ̶̡̯̆̂̾́c̸̢͍͙̪͊̓͛o̶̹͖̠̔l̵̹̑͋͒͝d̷̥͗̌̿̈́ͅ.̷͕̍̏ ̸̣̞̱͋"̵̙͖̱͝Ȉ̵̢͉̯t̷̯̦̫͔̉̆'̶̤͈͙̳͐̓̑s̸̨̫̥̈̎͘ ̸̱̬͂l̸̯͐͛̕ï̵̛̱͑̏͜f̵͙̓͜e̶̦̫͋̓̃̇.̷̠̯͙̇͊͊⌼̴̡̢̢̨̧̨̨̡̧̛͈̬̠̲̱͕̱͓̱͇̬̰̤̱̯̬̮̺̲͚̮̙̺̰͔͈̱͕̳̠̱̣̬͇͖͖̫̼͖̖̖̗̭̜̞͇͚͎͍̖̙̦̳̜͖̪̝̪͔̭͖͙̪̖̘̫̱̣̬̻̠̻̮̘̬̳͍̱͎̦͈͖͍̮̱̟̽͌̊͐̓͗̊̓̂̈́͒̒͜͜ͅṙ̴̢̨̡̧̢̧̡̙̠̪͈̰̙̯̬̣͍̫͖̲̖̤͍͙̮̦̬̘̫̼͚̼̯͇̞̳̮̲̘̜̳̪̫̖̱͇͈̼͍̭͉͖͕̯̱̹͙͍͔̗͈̫̣̦̲͍̝̘̻̎͆̇͛͛̀̉̅̑͑̐̏̃̎̈́͘̚̕͜͜ͅͅͅሁ̴̡̨̧̧̧̧̨̨̧̛͖͍̮̻̺̻̞̜̟͈͎̰̥̞̯̹̟̮̰̳̺̩̬̼̭̘͙̩̠̤̖̝̣͓͔͍̙͍͍̰̗̪̱̪̜̦̼̼̤̻͚̤͔̺̫̗̝̪͈̘̔̒̀̐͐͑͊̔̐̃̾̀̈́̈͊͌̈͋͐̈͊̈̈̐̔̈́̓̌̄̒̋͆͗̂̊̇̈͌̐̽̀̑͌͛̑̄̑͆̔̓͌͋̉̑̑̿͑͌̇̒͗̑̏̀͆̊̂̇͌̀͐̆̓͌̎͂̔̌̿̉̌͗͐̋̚̕̚͘̚̚̚͘͜͜͠͠͝͝͠͝ͅ╕̷̢̧̧̢̧̛̛̛̛̛̰̠̼̙͈̝̹̣͔͉͉͎̘̙̙̬̱͕̭̝̟̘̣͚̳̹̟̜̞́̈́͛̈́͗͐̈́̀̇̔͆̈͗̎̆̇͗̿͑̒̃̃͗͋͆̓̿̃̈́͂͒͂̉͊̈́̈́̃̾̑̈́̊̂͊̇̊̓̿̎̾̊̏̊̏͛̾̀̔̉̒̽̐̔͗̒̍̌̄̊̃͌̈́̾̓̓̐͛̈̐̈́̿̽̽̔̿̈́͊̂̏̕͘̕̕̕̕̚̚͜͝͠͝͝͝͝͠͝͠m̴̡̨̧̧̢͇̞̲̪̬̙̭̯͉̞͎̝̲̹̯͈͍̞̥̦̙̭̫̻̟͍̠̞̖̳͓̬͉̝͚̩͂͐͌̽̓̓͒̀͗̑̎̉͐͒̂̐̆̽̃̆̈́̏̓͑̎̏͌̃̀̿̓̾̾̅̏͆̀͐̌̒̏̈́̈́̉̀̃͋̒̈͒͒͘̕͘̚͜͜͜͝͠͝͝͝͝ͅͅ.̶̨̢̥͗ ̴̡̱̅̏͝͝Į̸̺̻̠̐̒̐t̶̡̜̯̻͂̇'̸̰͍̥̞̾̆̎͠ŝ̶̗̜̹̈̂ ̵̟͂j̴͈̳͔̼͛ů̵̢͓̜ͅs̴̖̞̋t̸̜̹̥͕̉͛͑͋ ̸̡͚̹̓l̴̫̃̐̾i̵͕̒̍f̶̫̫̘̫͌̄̎e̵͎̋.̶̠̭͕̈́"̷̞̳͚̻̉_

Ȉ̸͔̮̹̒͒̓̒̈́͂̈́́͑t̵̡̧͍̪̠̜̳̰̘͉̬͉̬͛͛̾̋͐͌̄͂͜ş̵̨̭͕̟̱̻̖̩̱͕͇̬̃̈́ ̷̗̺̠̱̹͎̣̟̹̤̝̠̆̎͋͒̚̕͝͠ͅj̶̧̖͎̠͉̐ų̸̧̡͈̗̗̞͖̭͌̾̉̉̓̆͌͝s̸̡͎͕͚̮̖͕͗͋̂͆̍ṭ̶̳̬̮̞̭̮̯̭̘̜̭̓̀͒̐̒́̋̿̄̏͝͝͝

"It's just--" 

He starts, voice distant and dull, echoing a corrupted memory that he can't even be sure is his but it keeps lingering at the tip of his tongue and refuses to leave. Tommy wrenches his chin out of the suddenly slacking grip only to tuck it into the safety of his own shoulder. 

He grabs him again, grip harsh and grinding into the bone, forcing him to look back up, voice dark with disdain. "It's just a compass." 

Tommy hits him. 

A rabid right hook, knuckles slamming harmlessly into the hard shell of a mask before glancing off.

His eyes fall half shut, a single huff pressed out from his nostrils.

He lets Tommy go, 'cause that's what he wants _right?_

Tommy scrambles clumsily to his feet, only to go looking back over the edge, hand flying up to cover his mouth, like he's desperately trying to hold something in. Words pressed like chants from his ribs _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry- I just- I_

The compass is long gone, as distant and mindless as anything else. Immutable.

"I just wanna go home. Please, can I go home?" 

Tommy's cracking words ring in Dream's ears, and he doesn't remember when it got so hard to keep himself from sinking into the past, flickering between the strings of red thread winding to the labyrinth's middle. Somehow forgetting where his heels were planted like he couldn't get enough of reliving every second. It wasn't this bad, it wasn't. It was easier before everything started to rot.

Before L'manberg.

Before everything.

_À̴̢̎ ̸̩̍̔p̸̗̌̒a̶͔̿̿r̶̭̾t̷̡̳̉̾ ̴̡̜̈́͗o̷͎͑f̵̺̭͝ ̴̮̌̓h̶̬̗̅̚i̵̪̒̔m̸̪͎̌ ̴͉̝̈͛i̵͕̿s̴̘̈́ ̴̧͑͐a̸̤̿l̴̙͆w̸̘̆a̷̯̺͑y̴̭̱̅s̷͎̝͠ ̸̕͜i̸͈͓̅̌n̵̟͙͂̓ ̷̣̈́ă̸̻̜ ̷̆̋͜t̴͚̰͗̇h̶̫͝͠o̸̞͛u̸̧̔s̶̛͓̏ā̷̧̰n̶̗̒̕d̷̤̈͘ ̵̘̘̚ḋ̶̝ḙ̵̓a̶̮͂̂d̸̡̯̚͝ ̴͕͝ẅ̸̳̘́õ̶̬̼͝r̶̝͗l̷̤̈́̚d̸̜̬͒͒s̷̹͐.̷̥̺͗͋ ̶̩̆͠C̸͙̭̉r̵̰͝ă̸̲̫t̷̯̅͛e̷̫̓͂r̷̼͐̑s̴͇̻̈̀ ̵̘̀ş̵͖̔̃p̸̣͎̒l̸̬̑͠i̷̲͚͊t̴̨̀ẗ̵͇̥i̵̙̅n̸̢̜̉g̴̩̯̀́ ̶̙̰̈͝ṱ̴̛̘̽h̴̞̔e̸͎͘ ̵̮͛ḛ̶̑̍ḁ̶͒̒r̷̥̎t̸̀̿͜ͅh̴̻͈̿͂ ̵̡͎̌̈l̸̼ĭ̸͔̘k̷̻͍̉̐e̶͚̚ ̷̻͍͗̿s̵̭͕̓c̴̻̫͊̔a̶͍̠͒ȑ̸͕s̴̫͠.̴̭͝ ̴̬͈̿̀Ĕ̵̦̝x̵̻͝p̴͉̼̌ḽ̵̓͒o̸͍͔͛͘s̶̭͐̓i̷̩͈̔o̷̩̣͒n̷̦̠̍s̵͈̟͆ ̴͉̏͗s̴̖̖̒͌h̸̜̏̽ȧ̵̠̥̓p̶͉̒e̶͖̹̐d̴̙́ ̶̰͓͑l̶̙͎̃ḯ̵̪͈ḳ̷ḙ̴̑ ̶̠͍̏̚s̴͓̟̎͗t̵̖̜͂͂o̷̗̝̅n̶̛̙̆e̷̲͌͠ ̸̮͆s̷̜͖̿k̸̭̍ì̸̕͜n̸͓͑̎ ̷̳̲̓̇r̵̡̙͐ḯ̸͍p̷̨̭͂̄p̷̱̎̅e̴͉̊d̸͉̿̉ ̸͈̠̊͊ẅ̵̥̖́ĭ̷̼͝ḏ̵̱ė̸̯͇ ̵̻̥o̶̤p̷̞͐e̴̹̓̈n̴̖͠,̵͈̅ ̶͓͖͠t̵͓͍̋̚ŏ̸̳r̷̳͔͑n̶̠͈̍͝ ̴͇͉̈́f̷͔̓̉r̷͔͆̓ỏ̶̭͉m̵̱̑ ̴̫̾t̷͎͑h̸̻̿͊ȩ̴͐̾ ̶̭̲͗b̷͈̀̕ọ̸͌n̶̛̬̟ë̵͚́s̷̖̐ ̵͑̏ͅọ̴͚͆̊f̷̡̺̈ ̷̝̿̌t̶̡̿̐ȟ̴͎̑ḙ̸̹̎ ̶̖͈͝g̸͓̏͜r̵̻̜̋̈́ờ̴͇͎u̷̲͝ṇ̵͉̓̎ḋ̶̨̉.̷̰̥̓ ̴̦̎H̵͎͛̀ē̸͇͕ ̷̬́͑l̷̜̇ö̵͖̪o̵̢͝k̸͚̫s̷̰͋̎ ̴̜̰͐ụ̸̡̈́̆p̶̙̾ ̶̞̺͂ả̵̲ţ̴̰͑ ̵̲̳̓̾T̸̿ͅh̶̛̥͕̅e̵̮͋m̷̘͑̿,̴̖͗͝ ̶͎̪͊̓l̸̢͓͝ǐ̷̘̺̑s̷̝̈́t̶̞̙͆́l̸̢̬̔e̷͇̾s̷̙̐ͅs̴͙̞ ̵̰͓͒͒a̴͖̿ṅ̴̥̐g̶̙̓̚ͅe̵̟̦͂̚r̵̻̒̚ ̶͍̚m̷͍̍͐e̷͕͍͊̕e̴̬̿t̴͙͐͜ì̴̧n̴̙̳̎͠ḡ̷̣̹ ̸̛̭̠ȟ̵̨̖ọ̷͐͝p̶̫̓e̷̥̐͝l̴̨̥̆̎ȅ̴̤̦͛s̴̢͛̏ş̵͂͛ ̶̛͕͘h̷͇͗̍a̴͂̐ͅt̶̩̎̍ẹ̵̄.̴̣̹̎ ̴̦̅A̸͉̞̒̒n̸̯͑d̶̹̑ ̶͕̯̃h̶̺̭͋͊ĕ̸͖ ̴͇̭̎̈́r̵̡͋̒e̴̮͝m̸̼͎̿ẹ̵̯̄́m̸̦̭̾̊b̴̘̳̅e̴̠̱̽r̵͎̋̐͜s̵͕̊̉ ̶̂̈́ͅẖ̵̪͗ö̸̘͝ẃ̸̱ ̶̳͊̂i̵̳̻̕t̸̩̊ ̵̢͆a̶͇̐l̷͈͎͂͝w̴͇̻a̸͍̐ŷ̷͈͒͜š̵̟͝ ̶̝͗d̶͎͈̿i̴̻͘e̶̺̫͌s̸̼̒̀,̵͎̝̈͠ ̸̛͔̒ĩ̷̤̈́t̷̻͊ ̸̞̃̓a̵̢̒l̷̪̈́ͅw̸͓͊͋ä̷̝́y̸̦͂ṣ̴͘ ̷̼̚͠d̵̳̟̓o̵͕̹͘e̸̦̚̕s̴̪̆̏,̷̟̱̒ ̸̛̰h̸̤̭̿i̸̜̽t̷͈͘c̷̭͍̆̂h̴̹͌͝e̴̯̦d̵͖͔̒ ̷͕̙̊͘o̶̺ṉ̷̓͝ ̴̟̺̅̈s̴͚̉ţ̶̛̹͆ǎ̷̡̔r̸̿ͅĺ̶͖̹̈́e̵̬̓̅s̶̢̻̊s̷͈̳͑͑ ̶̤̤̈́e̴̺̿y̵̍̏͜ê̶̲ṡ̴̮̌ ̵̗͋a̷̜̙̒̇n̴̜̪͌͝d̸̟̉ ̵̩̱̎e̴̲̍̕m̵̫̍͐p̵̛ͅt̷̝̄̑y̵̬͗͌ ̵̠̲͠p̵͈̯̿̂r̶͕̉a̶̯͗̕y̸̠͉̑ḛ̷̍r̸̲͓̓͘ŝ̸͖.̷̰͓̾͂ ̴̥́H̷̠͌ͅe̷͉̟̾ ̴͚͕̚t̴̳̎͋ȟ̵̦͜ḯ̶͔͐n̸̬̱͐k̸̞͒s̶͎̏͘ ̷̥͝ͅi̸̝̠̾̇f̷̯̅ ̶̝̃h̶̲͔̾͠ȇ̴̖̯͘ ̷̠̣͋̄c̵͚͙͑ǫ̸̭̑u̸̘̕l̵͍̜̄̎ď̶̲̻͋,̶̹̐ͅ ̷̬͒̃h̴̯͠ͅe̸̛͖̠'̶͖͋̓d̷̙͉̄ ̶̝͒k̷̺̳̄i̶͖͜l̷̞̿ļ̸̫̃ ̸͔̕T̶͉̓h̵̖̅̓e̴̫̺̾m̴̭̼͗ ̷̺̰͆͒t̶̤̑o̴͉̝̎̚o̴̫͍͗̆.̴̫̬͗͗ ̸̲͑̌"̴͎͠P̸͎̄l̵̟͂͠ė̷̫͘á̵̗s̷̪̭̆͑ě̴͔…̴̼̱͗̐ ̶̠̎̽I̶̪̍ ̶̦́ǰ̴̭u̷̧͖̇s̶̢̗̊́t̷̲̍ ̴̦̍w̴̯͓̔̚a̴̖͉̕̕n̸̯͒t̵̗ ̶̱͔͑̉t̶̼͗̆ō̶̠̝̓ ̸̼̩͐̓g̶̛̲͆o̴̢̝̅ ̵͓̜͑h̷͔͒ǫ̷̩̉m̵͈̼̾͐e̸͈͈̚.̷̤̝̐"̴̤̇ ̴̳̈B̶͌͜ǔ̸͎t̷̨͂ ̵͈̐t̸͎̅̅h̸͙͒̎e̸͍͕̒̅r̶̮̉̍ȅ̶̗̈ ̵̦͋w̴̹͠a̵͙̮̐s̵̩̯̈́͐ ̴̩̰n̶̦͖̓̽ó̷̧̩̔ ̷̹̉͠h̴͇̫̽o̵̗̟̅m̵̞͆̽e̸͎͊.̸̨̃̚ ̵̘̈͑H̴̠͎͋é̵͖̾ ̷̧̐̉k̶͉̗͂n̵̛̟̠͂o̶̦̮̒w̷͍̞̓͂s̸͎̈,̸̬͘ ̷͓̔̏h̵̜̭̃̂ę̷̕ͅ ̸̥̤̅̍ḱ̶̞̪͆n̴̩͇͒̚o̴̖͝ẘ̸͉̳ş̷̊ ̵̧̯̃b̶̘̏̚e̴̙̓c̴̬̊a̷̟̝̍͊u̴͚͖͑̀s̷̡̮̍e̶̗͆́ ̷̫̠͝h̴͍̪͆ȩ̷̝̉͝ ̶̨͊ͅk̵̥̠̃̐i̶͍͚͗͒l̵̥̣͑l̷͈̺̄͝ẹ̵͙̀͠d̴̞͑ ̸̦̺̋i̸̼̯͐͝t̵̋̈ͅ,̸̡̻̂ ̵̡̙̄a̸͚̓͂͜l̵̰̩͋̈l̴͉͔̊ ̸̞̔̿t̷̮͍̿h̶̙̖̾̚o̷̯͌s̶̢͝ě̷͖͔͠ ̴̛̲s̵͕̥̃c̷͙͒á̶͇͉r̵̖̙̾̊s̸̖͉̽̅ ̴̩̋͠t̵̩̝̕h̶̗͐a̴̼̟̒̑t̴͈̠̐̏ ̵̣̥́̃r̴̖͠ē̸̘n̸͚͆̋ͅd̶̲ͅ ̴̹̇̄t̴͍̖͋͘ẖ̸̂e̸͔͊͜ ̴̜̽̌e̶̛͚ȧ̴̪̓r̶̬̍ẗ̴̻͔́h̴̗̼̒-̷̭̆ ̴̳̊̕t̵̖̚h̵̳̔e̷̫̽y̴̖̒ ̶̼̐s̶̳͂͛c̸͈̤̈r̷̦͂͋e̷̺͊á̷͈̻m̴͈̓̈́ ̴̦͛l̴͎̠͌ì̵̜̐ḵ̸̢̉̃ẹ̷̆͐ ̴̨͕̽͋ā̷̗̬ ̶͕͑̋w̶͉̕ă̴͕͝r̶͉͖̈͗n̶͔̜͑i̶͔̾n̸͔̕͝g̴͙͓͒͆,̶̧͓̑͠ ̴̙̖̈t̴̢̔̋w̶̲̄i̸͓͛s̵̛͖̱̏t̴͕͙̃͊ ̸̢͖̽ḩ̷̲̅̆ỉ̶͜͝s̵̯͙͒̚ ̷͇̀͗s̶̭͈͑͝t̵̡͠ơ̵̯m̴̮̭̎a̷̻̒͐c̷̲͒́h̶͔͈͗,̸̢̻̎͝ ̸̦̐̂h̶̩̞͠e̸̘ ̶̞͉̓ă̴̘̲l̸̤̋ẁ̴̻͉̆ä̵̺́͝y̷͉̰̅̏s̵͚̍͋ ̴̖̅͠f̴̱̣̔o̵̝̗͛̏ṝ̶̉g̸͖̩̈e̸̼̘͌t̷̜̪̒s̷̠̔͊ ̸̢̼̌t̷͕͘͝h̵͍̗͊e̷̻̓̚ ̸͖̳̃͊l̷̰ē̵̩̐s̶̛̻̠͒ş̶̤̿̈́ŏ̵͍ñ̵͚̫̕.̴̻͍̔͒ ̸͇̌͊Ḧ̸̻́e̷͖̝͝ ̶̫̎̃s̴̥̅͜t̵͖͆a̵̮͖̽r̶͓̭͋ȩ̵̯̾s̶͖̊ ̸̹̃i̸̼̽ṋ̶̈́͜͠t̴̨̘̅ǫ̷̟̒͌ ̸̉̇ͅt̶̗̼͊̂h̵͕̕ẹ̷͝ ̷͎̯̒b̵̖̱͊l̷̤̓͛a̶͈̣͒c̷̪̑͋k̶̥͕̀h̶̡̯̍͠o̶͈͌l̵̪̅e̴̘͑ ̴̻̪͝d̴͉̃́ê̶̤͜p̵̢̃t̴̳̋h̸̜̄s̷̫̣͒͂ ̸̰͘o̴̯̓f̸͔̍ ̷̙̫̊t̸̩̉͘ḣ̴̦̮̿e̶͈̕ ̶̠̦̐͒c̷̠͑͝r̶̘̪̉͋ą̵̪̏ṭ̴̺̿̚e̴͋̈́͜r̶̤̔ ̶͖͓̌ạ̶̗̽n̴̝̏̚d̶̙͓ ̸̺̂͜t̷̛͕̤h̶̺̮i̶͈̝̐̏n̴̫̝͘k̴̗̍s̷͔̏͒ ̵͙̍̇h̴̼͐̊e̷͔̕'̷̓̽͜ľ̵͖l̸̨͔͘ ̴̞̔̓j̴̠͈̇̕ư̶̫͌m̸̡̂p̴̹͐ ̴̻̪̂ṯ̵͗ḥ̶͛i̵̟̔͆s̷͙̀ ̶̭͑̃t̶̯̙͌͝i̸̲͘ṃ̸̎̇é̶͕̏ ̶̥͒͑t̷̨̂̓o̸͇͉̒o̴̠̩͒,̵̯̑ ̴̘̿ť̶̥́h̶̙͓̑͝i̸̧͌ṋ̵͋k̴̦̮͒̎s̶͍͖̚ ̴͍̃͝h̵̲̿ȩ̸̝̿̑'̸̥̤̃͘l̴̨̖͒ļ̷̎ ̴̤̋̓k̵̘͋i̸͚̮̐ḻ̶̿͜l̴̟̞̉ ̵̭̺̎͝h̶͉̝͆̾ḯ̶̖̕m̵̊̏͜s̶̫͎̿͝e̴̬̹͘l̶̤͑͝f̵̛̮͚̉ ̶̡̙́o̵̠̬̒n̴̜̑ ̷̯́t̸͖̟̋͒ḧ̵̺̖͐e̴̫̽ ̵̠͘j̴̼̜͌ǎ̴̢͝g̸̛̲̮͝g̶̲̓e̵̫͈̕d̴̗͊ ̵̲̼͋b̶̺̌ǒ̴̫̘t̸̡̧̂͠t̸̺͔̄̚ő̸͎͒m̶͙͠.̵̭̕ ̶̛̮͊I̷̠͌͝t̷̪͙͋ ̷̺̉d̶̛̻͒i̴̧̇̅d̵̃̔ͅn̶̛͍̦'̶̦̜͗t̴͎̰͂ ̷̢͚͂m̴̲͋ả̵̼͔t̸͖͓̊͐ẗ̷̯͙́̈́ê̷̘͈ŕ̶̲̾͜.̸̺͍ ̵̤͇̔T̷͚̕h̵̋ͅe̶̹̬̒ẙ̴̹́'̶̢͑ḓ̵̈́͠ ̸̖͖͐͑j̵͇̋û̴͖̺̏s̵̞̬͂͊t̸͉̊͘͜ ̶̛̫͝ġ̷̨̺͊a̶͓̦͠t̸̮̃̐ḫ̴̅ḛ̷͗̆ṛ̶̋̊ ̷̟̏̉u̶̘͆p̸͈͛̍ ̸̩̈́͛t̴̨̄̐h̵̳͈̔͆e̶̱͒̓ ̷̣̂p̷̧̳̂̌i̶̘̟͗̏ě̵͕̑c̵̥͘͝e̵̫̯͊ș̸̐,̵͔̂͗ ̶̲̲͊p̸̟̙̈́̕u̵͙̼̐ẗ̸̠̈́ͅ ̸̟͐̍ͅh̸̪i̴̹̬͋m̸̳͇̐ ̴̧̌̇b̴̭̯͆a̸͍̰͛́c̸̡̹̽k̴̡̦̕ ̵̢̄t̷͇̼̆ọ̴̑g̷̜ě̸̯͎̈́t̸̘̍͝h̸͉̅e̴̘͉̐r̶̲̈,̸͕͍̃͒ ̴̹̘̍b̵̭̮̽͆ū̶͙̖ẗ̸͇́ ̶̤̓n̶͇͚͝o̸̗̳̓́t̴̠͉͘h̸̘̕i̷͙̟̍͑n̸̢̪̋g̶͚͂ ̴̼̞̐e̶̬̰̍l̶̯̩̈́s̷͚̎ē̵̱,̶̢͉͒̍ ̸̦͇̐̏n̵̳͋̅ȩ̴̤̂v̸̛̻͎è̴̤r̸̼̂͝ ̸̧̒ǎ̴̞̖͘l̴̢͊̑l̴̨͕̏ ̴̜̐͝ỏ̶͙̮͝f̴̗̅͜͠ ̶̼͌̕i̵͎̦̾t̷̺͓͛.̵̙̿ ̶̱͌̅H̵͙͎̿ė̷̹̚ ̶̟͆͌w̵̯̘̆́i̵̱͚̎̌s̸̙͕h̸̳̔e̷͉̓̋s̵̫̍͂ ̶̤̑͛ṁ̷̧͓o̷̟͌r̵̺̽̍e̷̱̗̊ ̶͉̺͆͝ţ̸̍h̸̬͓̍̿a̷̰̍n̵̫͂̌ ̴̹̝̀̌a̷̩̔͒ṉ̸̏ȳ̶̩̘̚t̸̰̻̓ḧ̷̭͚́i̶̯̇n̸̟̣̈́g̵͊̎͜ ̶͙̗͂͠h̸͓͒ͅë̵͙̻́ ̸̡͔c̴͖̞̓o̴͐̓ͅų̴̈́̆l̴̜͠d̸̻̟̏͝ ̷̩̈f̷̱̜͘o̷̭̖͐r̷̡͍͠ĝ̸̢̳e̵̱̼̐t̸̜̕ ̷̮̯̆̃h̶̺̮̔͘o̴̼͓͝ẅ̵̧͇ ̵̬͓̆h̶̩͔͝e̵͍͘ ̵͓̇ã̷̧͖l̷̡̋̌ŵ̸̱ạ̵̺̋y̵̜̳͆ş̸͔̽ ̴̟͚̇f̴͍͑ḛ̸̀l̵̩͊t̶̥͊ ̶̗̳̆ĕ̴̥̙͐v̷̞͛͛e̶̢̛r̸̠͕̄y̷̹͘t̶̤̗̓h̵͚̬́̀i̷̠̼͗n̵͓͔̎g̶̛͇̪ ̸͚̋d̵͉̎ḭ̶̏è̵̘͜.̵̯̉ ̶̳̏͒H̵̩̹̅e̸̛͜ ̴͖w̸̮̏i̵̖̓s̸̯̓h̶̼̐e̴̬͝ś̵̛͚͖ ̴̙̚̕m̶̛͙̻o̷͎̔̃r̵͈̗͝ẻ̵̺ ̶̥̣͐t̶̤̼̉͝h̵̨͓̃a̴͓̋n̵͍̓ ̶̡̫á̸̦ņ̵͔͂͊y̷̨̩̌t̸̫͌͜h̵͔̲̀ḭ̶͔̑̋n̶̩͇̽g̴̬͔͑̍ ̴̹̂̔ṫ̶̖͎͠ȟ̸͖ä̴̧́̈t̷̺̣̍̋ ̸̦̬̓̚h̵̝̿e̴̬̐ ̷͎̬̈́͐w̸͈̭̿̉a̷͓͂s̸̙̊͑ ̴͈̿̕a̷̩͐͝ḷ̶͠ļ̶̿o̵̺̚w̸̱̫̽̇ḛ̷͊d̷͉̽ ̸̭͝t̵̬̕o̴̩͕̿.̷͕̓_

He hates that it keeps happening, eating up his mind and his vision for two seconds too long, it shouldn't be a problem in the first place. All the blue in that dimensionless space of his inventory bled shockingly dark, the letter from Ghostbur resting there alongside it. Purple blacks of stone walls right in front of his eyes, blinking in and out, as he stares and stares and stares, splashed darker with something that he knows is red, he reaches for it. It disappears, forgotten like it was never there.

World once more washed in reds and oranges, he curls his fingers in a lazy pattern at his sides, feeling them ache like he'd spent hours slamming the knuckles into a wall. The ache dulls and he steps forward until he's stood at Tommy's shoulder. 

Tommy keeps looking down and even if he doesn't take a weightless step, he knows the hounding desperate call of the void, knows it's only a matter of time before Tommy comes back alone. 

He studies the kid's dead eye stare and thinks he's never really looked at someone and felt how much they wanted to die. 

Because how could they? How could some kid, some reckless fearless little nuisance have the audacity to want that so bad? After spending so long listening to no one, he what? Suddenly decided to listen to that little voice that screamed _jump_.

He puts a hand on Tommy's shoulder, less an olive branch of comfort and something more practical. 

Despite every warning, despite every time he's tried to manipulate something as fragile and volatile as memories, despite every instant he ever had it backfire- he does it again. 

He takes the memory of the compass, and not just that, but the very part of it that dwelled in Tommy's head, the metastasized growth of it. He takes that desire to jump like a siren song of the abyss. 

The very essence of a suicidal ideation boiled down to its roots and then slashed away, sloppy and impulsive, a lot like he's just waltzed into some stranger's home and lifted a family heirloom.

He grafts it to himself and burns the wound closed with a careful torch to staunch all the missing parts, connect them like they aren't bridges left half broken, some map of schemas unfinished. 

All that matters is that he leaves Tommy with no way to ever complete the thought ever again. A notion built on the dead end idea that lava could never exist as anything more than hot molten rock and something to avoid so he won't be burned. 

A fair trade so he doesn't have to repeat this all over again, so he isn't forced to babysit Tommy every minute, of every hour, of every day.

The new memory sits in his mind, foreign and odd, like a single virion intruding on the nervous system, because a memory couldn't just be destroyed. All of it always functioning under the same old laws, the same burdens to bear for acting out of line, whether physical or metaphysical, and there's a reason after all for having so many scars.

The freshest one like a saccharine smile across his throat, hidden under the high collar of a hooded jacket.

He takes the memory and its baggage like it was always his, until he's the one staring down, orange eating up his vision, the allure so strong he almost sways with it- so close he can almost taste it. He just has to take a step. 

It sounds nicer than anything.

Nicer than the pain in his chest, nicer than the rope 'round his throat, nicer than the shake in his hands and the whisper in his ears, a paranoia so thick and cloying it chokes him to his core-- words wrung like the rabid wing beats of diseased bees in the bone arena of his skull; ~~had it always been this quiet- had he always been alone- they hated him- Tubbo hated him- he's alone- there's nothing- no one left- not even the discs- where are the discs- where's Dream- all he has- all he has- all he had was the compass-~~

"Maybe it's not too bad, just me and you." Tommy glances towards him, an actual smile on his face, the sound of his voice echoing oddly with the disjointed thoughts caught in a violent loop in Dream's head. Fair enough, he thinks, they were the kid's after all.

He does his best to ignore them, letting them fade into background noise with a slight grimace, eyes cutting away from the orange beckon of something shaped like death.

"Alright, yeah, we can party together." Dream returns the smile, throwing his arm around Tommy's shoulders as he guides him away from the edge. The kid doesn't flinch this time, only smiling and launching into some animated story, hands waving through the air as he tries to use everything at his disposal to accurately recount it. 

He nods and answers along, all the right things said at all the right times, trying to ignore the incessant pull to just turn his head, to just look at the bubbling lava, to just fall in. 

But he wouldn't have gotten this far if he let himself be swayed that easily. And to fall in line with Tommy's way of thinking would be nothing short of embarrassing. 

The purple of the nether portal grows larger in the shimmering heat haze of the hell world. His eyes dart to his wrist, staring at that spot where the sleeve of his jacket doesn't quite meet the end of his glove, there's no more plausible deniability. There's no sliver of pale skin, just a rotten obsidian standing out in the sickly wash of the glowstone overhead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't my favorite thing in the world but it exists--
> 
> Sneaking more lore for this AU in there but a full explanation may or may not be a thing in the future, it's more the vibes than the hardcore history of how the Dream SMP is set up in this universe. I'm trying to just sort of write it out and wing it; it's not meant to be canon after all and really the goal is to explore a series of themes. 
> 
> A note about the use of They/Them for gods, you'll see later on characters using a combo of the two and not caring which one, while Dream uses mostly They/Them to refer to all gods as a collective-- he's got a whole thing with the word because he wants to distance himself from that reality, so you'll see the word crossed out or replaced with They/Them/Theirs especially in flashbacks/fever dreams or hallucinations.
> 
> Leave a comment if you'd like, I'll even accept ones that just bully me :) all of them are appreciated
> 
> ** If you really want to unscramble that text just throw it in one of those html corrupted text generators; although parts of it are unreadable on purpose ;) **


	4. Parasite Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to fall apart...
> 
> Why is it always obsidian?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so this chapter is only half of what I planned to post-- but I didn't want to start getting into too much. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: Drug (Potion) Abuse/Use, Implied Overdose, Self-Harm, Derealization and Depersonalization

It's a different sort of cathartic to spend hours setting neat rows of blackstone. The muted greens and golds of Sam's roughly humanoid figure move at a practiced clip, a square formed with the L-shape of his fingers and then spread apart in a tireless loop. A block settling itself neatly on the edge of the roof with a soft glow each time, forming the beginnings of the parapet for Pandora's Vault. 

Dream's hands move in a similar manner, copying the motion with a little less grace as he works on setting the dark blocks shoulder to shoulder (or arguably shoulder to bicep) beside the taller form.

Bad, Antfrost, and Punz set blocks at the opposite end of the prison's roof, although some do more work than others, Bad spending too much time chastising the other two for making it a competition. 

The sound of their chatter is a pleasant background noise, one that's been on repeat since the building had started, since their suddenly became the necessary anxiety to build an inescapable prison, that one day soon he'll have to use it. _Pandora's Vault_ a clever name, a twist on the old mythos they had explained, that effectually if you closed Pandora's box, sealed every ounce of chaos and misery back inside, then the monolith of obsidian stood as the shut lid between the world and its evils. 

There's a cautionary tale somewhere in there, some stale reminder that when Pandora opened the jar, hope remained inside. This, he opts to ignore.

He ignores it like how he ignores the incorrigible glare of the evening sun. Glinting with the effective quality of glass across his pupils everytime they catch the light. At this rate, his mask might as well not even be on. A pounding headache creeps in like the crawling burn of a fire ant bite and it takes him more conscious effort than he'd like to conjure up stone block after stone block. 

For the record, he was never a great builder, affinities gravitating in the opposite direction. 

"You know, I've been here awhile and I've known you a lot longer than most..." Sam trails off, moving to set the next chunk of blackstone with a certain sort of easy grace, spindly silhouette framed against the backdrop of the pale blue sky. "But somehow all this time, you've managed to avoid telling me who the hell you're the vassal of." 

Mid-step, almost as if his whole body seizes up at the word, he hooks the toe of his boot on the back of his heel.

The block he catches himself on gives, rock slipping against rock with a throaty screech. Heart plummeting unbidden into his stomach on a flesh and blood instinct. 

It's a word that without permission stings his ears with the sheer weight of it.

_Dream, I want to be your vassal._

Long fingers catch his shoulder, pulling him back.

Steady now, he bats the hand away, moving to drag the block back into place, gloved palms pressed to the vertices. Purple crawling up to his elbows with the press of magic between the molecular chains.

"Well--" Sam chuckles, "you certainly didn't get a blessing of grace."

"What is wrong with you? You- you're not supposed to ask something like that." He rounds on the taller creature, swiping imaginary dust off his jacket.

"Alright, sure, whatever helps unbruise your ego." 

Sam shrugs with a lingering laugh, stepping away as he dusts off his hands with a scrape of claws, singing like the _shing_ of knives. 

Something about the notes screeches in his ears, makes him hunch low, staring past, through, it's all obsidian, it's always obsidian filling his vision, hanging on every breath, it's all wrong-

" _So_ , seriously, tell me," Sam starts, dragging out the first word, "who is it? I think you owe me that much for, y'know--" he gestures vaguely to the entire prison, "all of this."

"Oh, so 64 diamond blocks just isn't enough these days?"

"The economy's in shambles." Sam deadpans.

He let's his laughter pass into a sigh, flexing his hands at his sides. 

"Uh, well…-" he struggles to scrape together a defense, "look, I mean, what the hell even makes you think I'm a vassal? I'm literally just some _guy_ , I don't serve anyone."

The last syllable is bitten off with almost a scoff. He hops up to sit on one of the finished pillars of the parapet, easy as a cat to the alleyway dumpster. As if to disprove the notion that he tripped on his own two feet in the first place. Limbs a bit weak, a bit shaky, and why? Why's there the sting of something at the base of his skull?

He rubs at it, the pain remains the same. It doesn't make any sense. He thinks, no he _knows_ he's done this, like a mounting prickle of deja vu only more threatening.

Sam gives a huff, head shaking as they cross a set of arms almost too long for their frame. "Let's see, you make deals and bargains like your life depends on it, you're way too good a fighter, you heal fast--"

He leans forward elbows on his knees, waving his hand in a circle like a silent, _please, continue_.

"And you hold some truly cosmic ass grudges, that's pretty much _Their_ entire calling card. Like I get why you hang around though, you've got a lot invested here. But I'm sure you could just as easily head to a bigger world, really make a name for yourself, y'know-" 

Furrowing his brow, his fingers move to clench against the edge of his stone seat. Bounties and contracts and serving selfish deities was for rabid dogs, he'd liked to think he didn't come off as one; not anymore, not so obviously.

Sam studies him, black eyes with no sclera sweeping up and down with a subtle glint.

"Y'know, I always pegged you as a Chaos. You got the dramatic flair." 

"Yeah, no-" His voice breaks with mirth, spine curving, "that's definitely more Techno's speed."

"That why he kicked your ass, then?" 

"Alright, now you're just being a dick." 

"Dream, c'mon, it's gotta be Chaos."

"I'm- listen, I've never even _been_ to the End. You know it's unreachable here." 

A half-truth; he'd most certainly been to the End, just not since it was practically destroyed. And it's not like he could scrounge up a plan to sneak back in, not when he's trapped in the boundaries of this world for all eternity. Not when he doesn't really want to.

He thinks, no, he knows he's not supposed to remember most of it. Left eviscerated, ripped to pieces on the black marble halls of an unreality, purple blood burning bright on his hands and the white catch of his fangs, all the damning proof They needed as he grinned up, up, up to the highest stand of a kangaroo court. Being exiled, funnily enough, is a sentencing worse than death. 

"Oh, huh... Always assumed you'd done alotta adventuring before you found this place." 

"Nope, I'm uh, born and raised, as they say."

"No joke?"

"Heh." The single chuckle falls easy, before he realizes Sam is serious. "C'mon, is it really that hard to believe?" 

"You're just--" Sam gestures to all of him, "I dunno you don't exactly give off those old _hometown boy_ vibes."

"I'll take that as a compliment." 

He shakes out his wrist, rubbing his thumb into the junction where it aches. Since when did he start wrapping them? Nails pick at the white layers of bandages peeking out from the gap between kelly green and black. When he pulls the sleeve down, the bandages go all the way up to his elbow.

He can't remember why that's important.

Staring down at them, he wonders what the fascination is. Since he can remember, the End existed in the brittle, ashen frame of a burnt down home, twisted foundation like funeral pyres, all signs pointing to arson. The gas canister and the match glued to his hands. 

Yet, everyone always seemed to go about drooling at the heels of the Elysian allure, two-faced in their hatred of abandoned gods and their thirst for power. All that before and all that after, the Beginning and the End. Like getting to that hallowed wasteland and it's wandering shadows truly meant something more than wading through the wreckage of a genocide, only to become the next dog left begging for rotten scraps while tugging at their chain in the yard. 

It made no sense.

Still, they went, still they slaughtered the endermen. All of them dropping their fancy pearls like a consolation prize. And maybe that was the whole gimmick of it, maybe he'd started a trend. The personification of the TNT fuse They'd inadvertently lit at both ends, because now the journey was sacrilege, it meant you were the best of the best, hand-plucked by destiny, no longer something vile and detested.

The facsimile of a hero's journey with the false golden fleece at the end, a parting congratulations in the form of cosmic servitude. It's almost embarrassingly familiar, like the smoky after image of craters caught in his peripherals when he walks through L'Manberg.

It's hypocritical. 

Kill the dragon, get the blessing. 

Kill the dragon, get the blessing. 

Kill the dragon, get the blessing.

He'd read about it so many times. Heard it from the smug lips of self-declared adventurers so many _times_ , from mercenaries and hunters, it's smeared thick into the grooved etches of scraped out memories that shout and mourn; it wasn't supposed to be this way. All the aftermath of a corrupted understanding, some bastardized policy on non-interference, that somehow cursing a handful of lucky mortals was less egregious than refusing to just stand there, allow things to fall apart and die.

He occupied some space in between, some grey shade of a being huddled under the heavy whispered distaste for Their own creation. A life spent wishing for an untimely death or demise, taking the form of sweet kerosene splashed across Their demands and haughty decrees. He'd smile and strike the match, an endless parting _fuck you_ before the final curtain call on a stage show he was forced to play.

What a waste, he'd learned to say in the aftermath as he threw his arms over his head, bent his back and curled low. All in the beats before They would pluck him up and scrape out the sloppy, cobbled portions of a beating soul. Some sickness, an infection, a parasite, a clerical error more vindictive than a wasp's nest and twice as angry. The pale imperfect impression of that _thing_ birthed only in the bone and meat cage of cursed flesh. Their eyes always cast down, hung like stars to remind him of where he comes from and what he will always be.

They held him tight by the scruff, as he twisted and turned, a wild rabid thing who screamed at the walls in bruised blacks and was doomed to forget the words, desperate to bite the hand that feeds because it was never worth it. Nothing was.

Vassals were just as trapped. The only difference being the shape of the shackles, the length of the chain.

He angles his head to look out across the kingdom, the ocean surrounding the prison glinting like a backdrop of diamonds cast bruised and purple in its shadow.

A world sometimes always violent, peace waged between the disgruntled notes, chaos being the only thing that ever reminded anyone of peace. It's an illusion like the passage of time whenever the sun stretches it's loud rays across the leaping line of forest only to be interrupted by buildings. 

"You ever think about how weird it is?"

Sam continues, "Like it's weird, right? To think about how They used to live here, watch the same sunsets and all that. Weirder to think that all those strongholds used to be like actual churches and shrines."

"Eh, guess I never really cared." _Lie._ "It's not like it matters, like sure the stories are interesting and all but- well, knowing why still wouldn't change anything. They don't care." He shoves his hands into his pockets, shuffling until his heels are dangled over the water. As if the conversation delves far enough into unsavory territory he'll just risk the jump.

Sitting so many stories up, staring down at the water so far below it might as well be concrete.

"Suppose you're right…" Sam's voice drawls. "My mother used to say They just up and left 'cause some human- some _kid_ , stole magic and gave it to the rest of the Overworld. That it pissed Them off so bad They pulled the old _dad goes to the store routine_ and haven't been back since. They built a utopia after all; how could anyone want more?"

____

__Sam tilts his head, sharp ears setting back. "But I don't think utopias can exist… I used to, I really did." They dip their chin, sighing, "But not anymore. And maybe that kid knew it when he had the guts to steal the one thing They forbid."_ _

____

__The story is a familiar one, shaped like the nursery rhymes he used to hear when he curled up under bedroom windows just to learn the discordant notes. Nights spent mumbling the words to himself, tracing less than confident letters in the dirt, all until he spoke the strange syllables without stumbling. And during the days, he'd swipe dusty tomes off low shelves to trace the irreverent turn of phrase and put the crude vowels to proper structure. Every day dedicated to building the rickety scaffolding of a better life just to have the brief halcyonic peace of it stolen from him._ _

____

__He knows that fairytale._ _

____

__"--and we're weak, y'know, we all still die." Sam continues, and he isn't sure what words he's missed but the mob hybrid is holding his body and his words in that familiar way that suggests they're off on a tangent. Conversation circling around a focal point like red string to a cork board, moving back along the threads to the center._ _

____

__"And no amount of magic or prayers is ever gonna change that. Sure some of us make it to the End, and what? Live a few hundred more years? But I think it's just a game to Them. They just watch. I'm starting to think it's all They've ever done."_ _

____

__"My father, well he obviously had a different story." Sam gestures to himself, explanation enough. "It's stupid but, I dunno, as a kid I remember thinkin' They were just allergic to water or something. I mean endermen hate the stuff so it made sense."_ _

____

__Dream wheezes on a half-laugh; it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard._ _

____

__"Oh, like you thought any different?"_ _

____

"Yeah, I did." _I lived it_ , Dream thinks as he grinds the back of his heel against the rough pattern of the stone, voice still caught in the notes of a laugh. All the details are roughly there, but they're half bubbled in, awkward and jumbled, there's nothing noble, or nice, or even idyllic about the past. Nothing kind about being relegated to fate and destiny. Like the old grandfather clock once lovingly tuned left to twist and grind, and then finally decay.

____

__"Alright, wise guy, let's hear it then."_ _

____

__Sam's tall frame sinks further against the groove of the parapet, shoulders hunched, looking out towards L'Manberg and the greater kingdom._ _

____

__He freezes up._ _

____

__No one's ever asked._ _

____

__And he tries to recall it, tongue caught between his teeth, brows creased. Staring at the water as it bleeds with refracted light on gentle waves. Blinding reflections stabbing his eyes, each little light the melody to a new headache, an icepick from temple to jaw. Chipping away._ _

____

__No, no. He remembers it still, he has to, it's an old tale, a dusty thing shaped like a box, sealed shut with no holes, no gaps for escape. Or maybe it's a jar- it's… it's hard to recall._ _

____

__He opens his mouth, tongue heavy with the words, vocal cords clogged with them._ _

____

__Nothing comes out._ _

____

__He tries again._ _

____

__And again._ _

____

__But no sound ever comes. The world continues, a loosely triumphant thing, with noise, and light and color, and everything that isn't him._ _

____

__In the lull of unbidden silence, Sam swipes a hand down the fur of his arm where redstone clings like a permanent aura. The dust of it puffing up like smoke._ _

____

__Violently red._ _

____

__Hand flying to his throat, he tries to say his name, tries to shout anything, and the resounding nothing is absolutely deafening. Nails gouged like claws into the fabric, and then the flesh, and then muscle, like he's trying to rip out his own windpipe for simply refusing to cooperate. A desperate animal instinct to scratch and gnaw at the problem in the hopes that it rights itself-_ _

____

__He coughs, something wet and dying, and only knows it by the rough slide of his ribs. The desperate jumping heave of his lungs. Silent, ugly heaves that send blood sliding across his tongue, choked and breathless with gurgling whines until they spill past his lips._ _

____

__Sam stares, not lifting a finger._ _

____

__Hunching, hands shaking and beyond clumsy, he fumbles at the mask, pushing at it with the heel of his palms, fingers curled into useless broken things, sliding clumsily against the slick surface._ _

____

__The white porcelain tumbles away._ _

____

__He doesn't have the mind to care. Too busy cradling hands over his mouth, sitting in forceful silence as he's left to shudder violently. Blood dripping, spilling from some internal malady until his forearms are soaked with it, dirty bandages saturated in a polluted sunrise. The excess splashing against the blackstone, rolling down, down to stain the water red with each guttural cough, iron nails twisted and scraped up his throat._ _

____

__Huddling low, cupping his hands, it's harder and harder to-_ _

____

__Fuck, he can't remember what, ** _what_** \- _ _

____

__He can't-_ _

____

__It doesn't make any sense._ _

____

__Blinking lazily, the thought dies like he's just thrown a punch at a brick wall. With shuddering eyes, pupils struck down to poisoned pinpricks, he forces them towards the blurring visage of muted greens._ _

____

__An empty heaviness gnaws at his thoughts, memories ripped and wrangled under the bullish canines of a pack of rabid dogs. Chomping, tearing hunks of himself from the bone, flawed and rotten and wrong, and still they choke down the maggots and the flies until he seizes and thrashes, dead hands scrabbling to scrape up the pieces while still trapped under the monotonous crunch of jaws._ _

____

__He mumbles, red the only thing slipping past his lips as he lists against the wobble of doubled vision. Hands slapping the nearest solid surface to hold himself up, legs bent awkward and wrong as he draws his heels up, tangled and overlapped, pain spreading and collapsing on itself endlessly._ _

____

__Clawed fingers twist in his jacket's collar, yanking him right off the parapet. Scraping and careless, fabric tears, skin catching and ripping, red multiplied. Limbs and joints knock like a puppet's cut from its strings, the back of his skull colliding with the blackstone._ _

____

__The crack is deafening. Vision cutting out only to return with an empty, crushing heaviness, eyes spinning of their own accord when they spring open._ _

____

__Whites flashing, frustration perched under his chin like a trapped scream. There's nothing that could have prepared him for the agonizing inching crawl, a bird from a worm, as his limbs quake and scream with each awful drag belly first against the stone._ _

____

__A heel planted between his shoulders sends his chin smacking into the ground, molars abused under the crack of his jaw._ _

____

__Elbow bending, fingers slipping and never catching, he flashes his teeth, bloody and stained, soundless shouts and curses pressed from his ribs as he squirms like a bug, weak and suffocating. Madness was expecting the thrashing to work, the weight bearing down on his ribs reminding him he's nothing more than a barking and howling dog._ _

____

_"It's not your time to die yet, Tommy."_

____

__He seizes, limbs rigid._ _

____

__The churn of lava pops in his ears, background symphony to the hop skip of breaths punched out of him on the verge of hyperventilating. Eyes screwed shut, cheek pressed to the hot grind of netherrack, his mouth opens before he can throw his hands up to slam it closed._ _

____

__"It's never my time to die."_ _

____

__The words tumble out like nasty blisters, cracking his ribs under iron fists held hostage to a crumbling repetition, a poisoned derealization churning in the blackhole of his brain. He hates how they're ripped from him, pliers shoved into his mouth, metal clacking against the enamel, stabbing at the meat of his tongue until it slots and catches on the grooves of a molar. Twisting out all at once with a sickening pop._ _

____

__If he cranes his neck, if he looks now- _no_. He knows what he'll see. _ _

____

__The heel grinds harder, ribs cracking with distant pops, his diaphragm struggles to force air into his lungs until he's dizzy with the delirious rush of acid building up in his blood, brain choking._ _

____

__A startling spell of clarity in the hypoxia injects him with the truth._ _

____

__That he's face down, foaming at the mouth. Overdosing on the floor of an obsidian cell._ _

____

__Reality chimes away for a moment in images of warbling darkness broken by the dim glow of glass shards coated in the bitter remains of swiped potions._ _

____

__It's snuffed out on the next shuddering blink._ _

____

__Swivel-eyed, oranges and reds of the nether spill back across his sight. He lifts his head, and doesn't hesitate when he cracks his temple against the ground._ _

____

__Crunch._ _

____

___Crunch._ _ _

____

__**_Crun-_ ** _ _

____

__…._ _

____

__He narrowly misses an axe to the face, leaping back, the momentum of it cuts the air with a whistle. He backpedals into the domestic setting of three figures gathered around a simmering fire. Boots knocking over a few items as he spins in a tight circle, off guard and sorely confused._ _

____

__They're not on the roof-_ _

____

__He's not--_ _

____

__Why isn't he..._ _

____

__He glances up, question dying on his lips._ _

____

__Punz rests an axe on his shoulder, other hand casually slung in the pocket of his hoodie as he tilts his chin up with a grin. The sweat glittering on his forehead stands in as the sign of a spar, a clue to some fight that he can't remember but feels reflected in the ache up his arms, fingers a mess of static where they wrap around Nightmare's haft._ _

____

__"Are you two done?" Bad chides, righting the things that had been knocked over with a scolding _tsk_._ _

____

__"Yeah, I think it's safe to say Punz won that one." Sam chimes in, poking at a fish laid out over the flames, chin propped up in his hand._ _

____

__"Aw-" Punz coos mockingly, "thanks, Sam. Y'know your undying support really means the world to me."_ _

____

__"Alright, now you're pushing it." Sam warns, light and friendly._ _

____

__And like nothing's wrong at all, the merc moves to sit causally on one of the chests pulled close by the fire, reaching for the glint of netherite that Sam offers to him with a parting comment._ _

____

__Some deal struck between the two that he knows exists like snide comments tossed back and forth, but the pieces are gone, holes ripped in the narrative that fingers plunge through only to stretch them wider, losing more, the harder he tries to recall them._ _

____

__Punz and Sam strike up some easy conversation, as if they'd been chatting for hours already, Antfrost and Bad meshing into it like rivers converging into a lake._ _

____

__The rest of their words are distant, muffled under miles of cloth, clogged like water beating against his eardrums. They continue in the distance even as he stands only feet away._ _

____

__He's too busy tracking his eyes from the shape of the prison across the water, to the fire, to the walls of Bad's home, a bright backdrop to their little gathering. Every turn of his head is stiff, forced out of him through the twang of strings yanked taut at every joint._ _

____

__He doesn't remember._ _

____

__He doesn't think he remembers how to remember because he isn't supposed to forget-_ _

____

__It doesn't- it's right there. He knows it's right there, tastes it like something burning his tongue, feels it like something sticky on his lips, spilt down his chin._ _

____

__His eyes finally skate to where the sun had just been._ _

____

__It's gone; moon pinned like a silver smile high in the sky._ _

____

__There's a heavy hand of something oppressive pushing him down. Gravity shoving at his shoulders like if it tries hard enough, it'll push him straight through the ground. A constant tension like the opposite ends of two magnets held millimeters apart._ _

____

__In the delirium, some disturbingly loud feeling decides to crowd his mind among the numb notes of its usual rhythm. Hand shaking, he swipes the back of it under his chin, catching the gathered moisture there before stepping out of the ring of seated figures. Moving further into that liminal space where the shadows dance with the edges of the light._ _

____

__A couple steps out, he half-turns back, watching a moment as the four of them laugh and smile around the fire. Antfrost pelting something across the impromptu grilling pit at Punz, the latter throwing his head back with a laugh._ _

____

__Brilliant flames leap and spit their embers, keeping them safe from the annoyance of mobs in the night, the light splitting the darkness like a beacon to the heavens. Illuminating bright eyes and brighter smiles, the smoky crackle of fish and warming bread rests between them, wafting into the air._ _

____

__A wispy huff of a breath presses from his ribs and he pivots on his heel, the urge to run chomping at them._ _

____

__"Wait, wait!" Bad calls, reaching over to pat the nearest flat surface, "sit down, mister, you gotta eat something before you go running off."_ _

____

__Not really remembering the when or the how, Dream occupies that last seat in their semi-circle, tense with all the energy of a feral animal ready to bolt. He doesn't know why, a feeling in his stomach that twists harder until he's hunched lower and lower and he has to leave, they'll lock him back in, he has to-_ _

____

__There's the crunch of a loaf of bread being torn before it's held in silent offer. Vapor wisping off the fluffy innards._ _

____

Whispers of _poison_ chant and chatter in the back of his head. A persistent, unfounded paranoia, he furrows his brow and grabs the split roll in strict defiance.

____

__He doesn't realize he's just sort of holding it, mask angled down, immortal line of a smile grinning at the cooling hunk of flour, yeast and water. He remembers this. No, no, he _definitely_ remembers this._ _

____

Punz stares across the fire, brow raised, picking at the flaky flesh of blackened fish. His eyes fall to the bread, to the beady black dots of the mask, and then back again. One hand moves through the air, curving into a quiet question of a gesture, _you good?_

____

__The concern is an annoying habit._ _

____

__Rolling his eyes half-heartedly, thumb stuck under the bottom edge of his mask, he tilts it up, and takes a bite-_ _

____

__He's almost surprised when nothing happens. The bread tasting of warm creature comforts, time spent kneading dough and a cozy sort of companionship. It's almost too easy to finish, no usual aftertaste of ash or rubber, like for once he was actually allowed to enjoy something so utterly human._ _

____

__Staring into the fire, listening to them talk, it's easy to forget that all of this was something They never had._ _

____

__"Hey, Dream," Bad starts, white eyes glowing and curious, "where'd you get that?"_ _

____

__"What're you talking abou--" his words are cut off when he looks down at his hand, once clutching the last scraps of bread now-_ _

____

__He throws the compass like it's bit him._ _

____

__Scrambling, he falls right off the back of his impromptu seat. The grass slick with moisture as he crawls his way through it. Wild and feral, heart leaping in his throat as he bites off choked sounds and kicks his heels to get away._ _

____

__Four figures stand, slow and calculated, silhouettes stretching and flickering in the flames. Their eyes burning angry purple whites._ _

____

__He runs._ _

____

__Ducking under and leaping over obstacles like he's got them all memorized, every jump as scripted as breathing, fingers never slipping where they grip as he swings himself up and over. He runs until his boots hit the prime path and he ducks under the safety of the archways, peering around corners and expecting to feel the snag of claws._ _

____

__Looking over his shoulder, expecting something that never comes, he keeps going. Feet lead by some instinct, he trusts them, trusts the tug of safety, the almosts, the freedom. He just has to-_ _

____

__His next step meets air and he throws his hands out, twisting like a cat to snag the ledge. Body slamming into the jagged blown out side of the cliff, he wastes no time driving the toe of his boot into the rockface, throwing himself back to safety._ _

____

__Heaving panted breaths into the dirt, hand clutching bruised ribs, he casts a glare at the misplaced ravine._ _

____

__All sense of urgency dies when he recognizes the outline of homes in the crater, a familiar flag all the way at the bottom, light tossed across it like fire by pockets of lava. Lattice of obsidian stretches across the sky like the snaring fingers of a net, illuminated by the glow of tattered lanterns that still drift and wobble in the air._ _

____

__L'Manberg blown to kingdom fucking come, and he doesn't even have the capacity to feel vindicated, it's all numb, static, a complex catch nestled halfway between tragedy and confusion; one part not remembering, one part traumatized. Like he's someone stood on the edge, not above, bright flashes of bombs caught in his eyes, ash in his mouth like curses flung at a traitor. The sick burning crawl of irritated air in every drawn breath to the pit of his lungs._ _

____

__Something shoves him, a firm palm drove into his shoulder._ _

____

__He whips around only to be met with a sarcastic smile, a familiar face, and a white hoodie._ _

____

__"C'mon, dude, just jump."_ _

____

__"What're you- what the hell is wrong with you?" He laughs and looks to the bottom, like it will ease the tension, ease the rapid descent into delirium, hands flexing, palms and the back of his neck prickling._ _

____

__"Jump."_ _

____

__"I'm-" he takes a step back, " _Punz_ , I'm not gonna jump. Stop being weird." Firmer, incredulous, he faces the merc and tosses the words with an easy lob. They hit an impassive brick wall._ _

____

__Punz takes a step, and then another. He mirrors each one in a forced equal exchange, feet moving of their own accord, forced further against the dizzying drop with each step Punz takes. He doesn't- he _can't_ run away, he can't hurt him._ _

____

__"You do this every fuckin' time." Punz sighs, "Doesn't it get old?"_ _

____

__"Wh- no, I'm not- I've never-" the words are stolen from him each time they start. He looks from Punz to the approaching drop. "You're not making any sens-"_ _

____

__The words bite off as his heel slips off the edge._ _

____

__"Fuck, wait- this-" He gestures to all of it, breathless and agitated, "this doesn't make any sense."_ _

____

__Heels hanging over, he sways and sends pebbles slipping off into the lava below. He looks over the edge and chomps on the inside of his cheek harder, it's wrong, it's all wrong and he feels nauseous with the noxious throes of it._ _

____

__"Punz?" His voice is so much smaller than it should be._ _

____

__"You should've paid me more, Dream."_ _

____

__When he looks up, it's not just Punz but a gathered audience behind him, a colorful crowd of impassive gazes, judgement cast in the tired set of their eyes, the glint of their armor and weapons. That weary wartorn hunch to all of their shoulders. Every one of them huddled in close, staring, waiting._ _

____

__"You can't kill me." He whispers it to the jury, a final defense._ _

____

__"Yeah, but it doesn't matter does it? Just so long as it hurts."_ _

____

__Punz stabs fingers into his sternum like knives, shoving him straight into the open arms of gravity._ _

____

__He smacks the ground._ _

____

__The fall is a thousand feet too short, every bone crying for their prolonged abuse, every bruise casting their tired cries when they collide against obsidian. Fingers scraping the ground, he pushes himself back up into that black cube of darkness, a yawning casket of nothing in the absence of everything. And he throws himself at the prison walls if only to feel the world tumble away again._ _

____


	5. Remember.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are many ways to destroy a person, but one of the simplest and most devastating is through prolonged solitary confinement... Their sense of their own bodies- even the fundamental capacity to feel pain and to distinguish their own pain from that of others- erodes to the point where they are no longer sure if they are being harmed or harming themselves." - Solitary Confinement: Social Deaths and Its Afterlives, Lisa Guenther

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a short chapter but while working on it (and doing research into a shit ton of different topics) I realized I wanted to take this a completely different direction than I had intended! 
> 
> After watching the most recent streams and seeing the way Quackity intends to build up capital alongside Sam, and the Eggpire of course, I was like mmmm I have some ideas- time to delve into anarchism baybee. 
> 
> So if you've stuck around this far be prepared for pretty much every character to show up at some point and for this to delve into some territory that explores all sorts of themes through the lense of a green dude who's gonna be thrashed by his experience in solitary confinement among other things.

His hands smack the solid surface, running along the dips and grooves with a rasp, claws scraping the sides of his obsidian coffin until they're chipped, brittle, cracked things, less familiar than when he started. Fingers forming fists when they start to bleed and he settles for throwing punches. 

They always start as weak tosses at first, gentle taps with his knuckles against the obsidian likes he's knocking, like the warden who's face he can never quite recall will come rushing to answer, words calm and collected as he whispers them in half-realized rhymes to no one. A one way ticket to a descent into bitter madness when it finally dawns on him. 

Until he's slamming them full force. 

"No, no, no, no, no--" 

He beats at the obsidian walls, fists beyond broken, knuckles crushed into dust, he was just there, he was just there-

He was just-

Fingers splayed across the obsidian he bows his head until the top of it bumps against the wall. 

"Please… please I'll-" he cuts off, lips curled, fangs flashing as he breathes words into the world, feels them sting on his tongue. "I know you can hear me… I know, I know-" it's harder and harder to find them, "I'll be different, Sam." 

_Who?_

He clings to the name, even if it no longer means anything to him besides the difference between endless solitude and freedom. 

"Just let me… out. Let me- I promise." He whispers broken prayers to stone, dead and quiet. 

His eyes catch on the form of damnation caught in the purple glow of the netherite bands welded to his wrists, unbreakable, unmeltable, inescapable, shackled to clenched fists and explosive self-destruction. Every opportunity taken to rid himself of them failing miserably.

The wall sways, heaving like the sides of a great beast and he shuts his eyes against the vertigo it incurs, oranges cast like a cruel, constant lamp light over his shoulders, spinning reality into a derisive joke. Always too hot, lava scorching the air, his lungs, his eyes, wrapped around his mind, constantly buzzing, always droning on with the lifted notes of a never ending mockery at his expense until he screamed for it to stop and failed when finally his voice gave out too. 

There it remains, the endless scorching curtain he'd given up trying to swim through, when after one time too many he found himself back in that cell. Rage left to fester without direction aimed at the small luxuries he had been afforded. All of them cast into the molten rock just to watch it disappear- scooping burning pages into shaking hands if only to watch his bones press through the charred remains of burnt skin, blood boiling black, relentlessly confused by the sight. 

He earned more scars, earned more books, new chests, new everything, stuck in a loop for eternity. 

They just brought him more. 

They just watched.

Scattered images like the flashing reel of an old projector spin through his mind, projected onto a life recalled in disjointed motion. That damn beach party, L'Manberg, Pogtopia, Logstedshire, craters like fingers reached from the heavens to gouge great holes into the earth, thunder shook down like the boughs of lightning shot from the sky, gone, _gone_ \- all of it. Like the sickly sweet smell of nitroglycerin, the vinyl grooves of music discs, miles of blackstone traded for obsidian.

He was just there, he was just...  
He'd just-- 

He'd had it.

Blood splashes like toxic waste across the ground, seeping down his arms, into the thirsty fabric of a flimsy jumpsuit. Red spilt sticky in the slick texture of obsidian under the pads of his feet, too bestial to be anything but paws. Body and hands to match. 

He throws himself at the wall harder, limbs crashing into it, body breaking against the immovable force with a thundering crack. 

He crumples, blinking awake to a familiar world of nothing a moment later. That tight knot of a poisoned ache at the base of his brain jumps into a leaping crescendo with his pulse. Mouth parting on fast pants, the air tastes sticky and acrid, teeth and tongue slicked with old blood and older bile.

The world is a doubled mess of static. Quivering lines echoing the fractures spread out like thin spider webs across his skull. 

He staggers, acid coating his tongue as he lists and stumbles, catching himself on all fours, limbs too long, ungainly, angles in all the wrong places. He thinks he's supposed to be used to them by now. When he tries to walk straighter, his shin collides with something solid.

Busted fingers twist in the fabric of bed sheets, rotten purple blacks against smooth whites, the slight give of a flimsy bed roll on a solid sheet of wood beneath it.

How long has he had a bed? 

The fabric tears, bones and tendons crunching as he wrenches the scratchy sheets towards himself, trying to see it- trying to remember. 

He bumps it against his nose and still the reminder never comes.

He'd already done this-  
Had he done this? 

Like a record stuck on scratch he's back at the wall, thinking if he throws one more fist, if nothing changes then he'll start bashing his skull again; that at least showed some results. He casts his eyes to the corner, knows there's glass and the sticky dredges of a dried up potion laid there, blood and sweat and vomit like the coffin markers to an empty grave. He was out of options after all.

He rears his fist back-

"You are a dumbass, you know that? You spend all day goin' round in circles doin' the same sad sack of shit circus act." 

No, no, no, _fuck_ , not him again. He looks to the curtain of lava, the neon vibrance of it glittering, flowing without interruption. No indication that it ever stopped or that it would.

No one is there, he knows that, but he can feel the gaze, that heavy thing that never seems to lift itself from the hunch of his spine, the draw of his shoulders.

Bristling, he flashes his teeth, ears set back and tail straining against where he'd tied the damn thing to his leg, an old strip of fabric ripped from the sheets serving as the tourniquet to salvage his humanity. He'd turned refusing its existence into a pastime.

Finally pushing away from the wall, he shoves his hands into his pockets and swings his head, coming face to face with blue eyes and blonde hair. A growl punches from his chest on instinct.

"Go ahead. Growl, bitch. You're never gettin' out. Not in a thousand million fuckin' years."

"You should go." He rasps, words scraped up his throat.

"Hf, that is rich comin' from you." The kid laughs, eyes set somewhere between smug and sarcastic, always too bright. "Yeah, right, cause when you're not too busy tryna off yourself, you sit there begging the walls to talk back. Pick a struggle, pussy."

"I… I said I don't want to talk to you." The words are more air, less sound.

"Then why'm I the only one who bothers showin' up?" 

"'Cause you're not real."

"I'm real, I'm the realest between us, bitch." 

"I don't need your opinion, T-" the name dies, decaying as fast as it comes to him. "To...T-" It dissolves into the crunch of glass and bones, a grinding growl echoing into nothing. The name stolen from him. He clenches his fists, hands shaking at the tension, clinging to the tiny scrap of control.

"You don't even remember my name." The hallucination scoffs, "This is just fuckin' sad."

"I do. You're the- y'know, you're that kid." He laughs, biting and quick, a sloppy defense scraped together on flashing teeth and false animal grins. 

A frown mars his face a second later, moving into a pace, head tucked down, "You're the… the--" he waves a hand in front of his face, "the kid, the uh, the one with the… eyes." 

"The eyes? Holy shit man, you really are _fucked in de head._ "

"Tommy… _Tommy!_ " Triumphant he shouts, grinning at nothing, smiling too easy over something so stupid. Like it's an accomplishment to forget the same thing everyday. 

"Congrats, dickhead." Tommy sits, falling into a haphazard cross legged thing on the bed, not a dip or creak from it. "You remembered a name ain't that impressive, ey? Riddle me this, who was I?" 

He doesn't have an answer and the kid knows it. It's just him after all. 

"C'mon you fucked around in my head, took my memories and shit. There's gotta be a few of mine still rattlin' round the cobwebs up there." 

"I never…" It trails off, dead and flat, the single resounding thought of _did I?_ becomes a rhetorical question.

_"Who do you miss the most?" A lull stretches that he refuses to fill. "Who do you miss the most? if I were you I'd miss Sapnap."  
"I think you should go, Tommy."  
He holds his breath, eyes turned away.  
"No, tell me who you miss the most."  
He never does, not even when he hears the words uttered in every iteration and they expect him to break under the weight._

Crouched on the ground, caught in the landslide of memories seeping through the gaps in his mind, the sound of chirping notes haunts his ears. 

Curling in on himself, he throws his arms over his head and drags his heels closer to his body, ears pinned back until they strain the delicate muscles. And he curls tighter because they're wrong, it's wrong, it's all wrong, they shouldn't move, they shouldn't- he shouldn't-

He can't remember what he's supposed to look like. Understanding ripped at the edges everytime he looks into the water basin and catches the face of someone, _something_ he hasn't been for so long and still it's all he knows. The sense of self decayed and remodeled after the ancient afterimages, a timeless exposure on a silver print photograph.

Claws catch the long fur on his scalp, so familiar, almost _almost_ like hair, scraping through, tearing, stuck alone with a solitary violence. 

The bittersweet melody of a music disc he'll never forget plays louder and louder, warping into the soulful tunes of song birds. 

It's a sinking sort of realization when he tries to remember the sky, but can only recall the birds.

The sky.  
He was just under it.  
He was just-

The warbling grind of redstone and moving levers echoes in the obsidian coffin, the lava churning angry and interrupted in its sluggish flow.

Stomach dropping he refuses to face it, the constant glow bouncing around the room, slamming into his pupils, black blown too wide to try and catch every scrap of light. 

In a sweeping wash of numbness, he plants his heels and stands mechanically. 

The first order of business is sweeping the old shards of glass on the ground into the lava. Nothing to be done about the bittersweet remnants of potions of weakness smeared into the obsidian but if he's lucky they'll go unnoticed.

A part of him leaps eagerly at the notion that the guards will show up, more splash potions lashed to their belts begging to be swiped. More chances to try and rile them up, piss them off, throw food back in their faces if only to watch another person react and move and consume the space in front of him. He'd tried using the splash potions on them once, in their fancy armor with their flashy weapons, but settled on downing the rest of them himself when that earned him a lull of almost no contact at all, no food, nothing. 

He begged for them back, even if they came and stole his books, and his things, and anything he formed an attachment to. He played nice, smiled and laughed and pretended, until they stopped chucking raw potatoes across the netherite barrier like he was a rabid animal. Until they actually stepped foot in his cell, splash potions still on their belts, all dark vindictive glances, pretending they didn't notice when he stole them.

On an unsteady gait, he stumbles to the single chest in the corner of the cell, glowstone blinking over head. The clock ticking away, too fast, too slow, the starting shot to a losing race as desperate bloody hands slip on the lid before he catches the edge and wrenches it open. 

Desperate, he sifts through them like a feral animal in the trash. Books, loose sheets, broken quills, all swiped aside without care, he can't save them all, he can't- 

If Tommy, the _real_ Tommy, didn't throw them in the lava, the guards always came to collect them as penance eventually.

Hands wrapped around the worn spine of the oldest one, he thumbs through it, sloppy sketches of places and faces greet him, names scribbled in the margins. 

He shoves it in the chipped out corner beneath the mattress of his bed, smoothing the sheets out on top, nearly vibrating apart at the seams when red smears and handprints glare up at him with all the damning conviction of a forced confession. 

They'll find it.

He reaches for it, glancing over his shoulder when the ambient light starts to dim. He's out of time, the lava barrier fallen away, he doesn't stop to see who it is. It doesn't matter, it never matters, he's too busy contemplating where he can hide it, but his brain is sluggish and slow, reactions existing solely in the realm of instinct and a new hiding place never comes.

There's just that absent sort of logic that occasionally screams in his ears and reminds him that he'll just keep forgetting more. 

The scribbled words and pictures are the only thing between him and a dark, listless void. The blank pages that replace them are always harder and harder to fill. 

"Duckling?" 

Hooves click against obsidian.

"I know I should've come to visit sooner. I'm so sorry, things just… things just got outta hand, and I got busy with the therapist office and some stuff in Snowchester and…" The words trail off, left on a short sigh, always shaped like the way warm light filters through the gaps in the leaves. 

He remembers that, remembers them.

"I know it's probably a stupid question but… how are you holdin' up?" 

"Uh, pretty good, all things considered..." He hammers his words smooth as he turns slightly, angling himself just enough to see that white splash of wool, the red of a sea captain's coat. 

Hooves click closer and he turns to face her fully, crouched slightly, shuffling to set himself between her and the one book he can't let them take.

Frustration stirs like a thunder cloud in his chest when he sees her, recognizes her, and still can't remember her name. He has to pretend, anything else is admitting weakness.

There's that same shuffling silence that collapses around them, like everyone walks in the cell and the capacity to hold a conversation just disappears. 

She removes her captain's hat, shuffling it in her hands, eyes cast somewhere between the ground and him and for a moment he almost looks over his shoulder, a stale momentary confusion that comes with forgetting he's real.

"I wanted to bring you some cookies but Sam wouldn't let me in with 'em." 

Sam? Sam… right, the warden. 

"Yeah, that guy's a stickler." He shrugs, mind racing to come up with the right thing to say, all of it thin and slippery. "It's fine though, I get potatoes. They're raw, but… eh, guess it's something y'know. At least they… at least they feed me." 

"You sound terrible." Her brow scrunches, voice wrung tight, "you _look_ terrible." 

"Thanks." He flashes a smile, seeing a sad one reflected back and jots it down as a win. 

Letting himself fall back on the bed, he flexes his hand and stares at it like it's not his own, like the distant cry of pain from weeping knuckles isn't his.

"And you're bleeding!" She sits beside him, hooved hands cupping his own, "Duckling, how long ago was this?" 

"I…" His ears set back, "I don't know, an hour maybe?" 

Her silence sets his tongue scrambling for justification. 

"It's hard to… it's hard to tell, the clock is- I think it's too fast." 

His eyes keep drifting to the corner of the bed, she's sitting too close, too close, every inch of his being itches with the notion.

"It should've healed by now." She dabs at the worst of it with the corner of the bed sheets.

"Yeah the… the enchantment on the cuffs, it negates innate magic. Uh, glamours and natural magics like the ones influenced by… by the End." He gestures to all of himself, the words clumsier than intended, and he can't remember if he's had this conversation before but it's something he knows, something he can control. 

"I know, you told me last time." She says it so plain, so casual, as if it's that easy to recall.

_Last time?_

Eyes wide he tries to breathe normally.

"-we talked about L'Manberg, I told you about Sam's plans for an economy, you showed me some drawings..."

"What?" He can't stop it before it comes tumbling out of his mouth.

"Dream, do you… you know who I am, right?" 

He can't lie, he can't lie, and that name suddenly sounds so odd, and he knows it's his, but what's hers? Maybe if he plays the part well enough, she'll be a piece in the long puzzle to get himself out. The books and the lava, none of it will matter. 

"I'm sorry, I-" Scrubbing the back of his hand across his cheek, he bows his head. It's easy to pretend to cry when he's that frustrated, "I don't know. It's hard to keep track, I write them all down, but…" 

"Right, your books!" She stands, moving towards the chest and rummaging through it like she'd done it before.

 _"Don't touch them."_ It's more snarl than words, teeth flashing.

"No, no--" She backs away from the chest, hands up and placating, before she turns back with an explanation on her lips. "I'm just looking, I swear. I just wanna see something." 

He watches her and is trapped with trailing thoughts that if he tries hard enough he could snap her neck. No armor, no weapons, nothing to save her. It rings around his head until she emerges triumphant from the depths of the chest. 

Her smile wiping away the thought with almost a hapless wash of guilt. 

Flipping through the book, Puffy scans the pages. 

"Here, duckl- _Dream_. This page right here-" she holds the book out, thumb holding the spot, "see you do remember, it's just a bit hard for you right now. That's all." 

She presses the book into his hands, not realizing he'd even raised his to accept the offering. 

The vague shape of something that he thinks is supposed to be a drawing of her glares up at him, script wrung around the little drawing like a scribbled crown. 

"Puffy."

"Hey, there you go." She congratulates, words soft as velvet.

Fingers tracing the arrows on the page he leaves a thin rusty trail of blood across the surface to an oval, an egg, squiggles stretching from it, question marks drawn thick-

"An... egg? What's that got to do with you?" He chuckles, the distant knock of a fistfull of memories pounds against his skull, crimson and creeping, something on the tip of his tongue. An altogether angry thing that he recalls distantly, like an intruder in his own home that he keeps forgetting is there but for the items that he keeps finding moved around. He smears his thumb across the page, staining the drawing red.

"You remember when-" Puffy stops. "Sorry poor choice of words." 

"'s alright." He nods, pads of his fingers tracing the sharp edges of the parchment.

"So, uh, last time I told you about Bad-" 

"The guard." He interrupts, overly confident in his stance on that. He knows that at least. 

"Well, he was also your friend- I mean he was _my_ friend." Puffy's voice jumps, "I just, ugh, listen I know you're stuck in here, but it's-" 

Puffy throws her hands up, crossing her arms with a huff as she starts to pace, frustration bled from her in a way that doesn't seem to line up with the few stray memories he manages to clutch in his hands. 

"Bad wants to let these red vines spread all over the place, and he's got this whole Eggpire and they're tryna get everyone involved. And just when we had an ounce of peace-" 

He tilts his head, ears set forward, catching every word like he's straining to hear through static.

"And I don't- I'm not sure what to do. I mean it doesn't exactly seem harmless! Like something's wrong with them. Something's wrong with my friends. Things are all- they're just-"

She sits on the bed with a huff, back bowed hands over her eyes. "And you're in here. And I'd… I'm afraid it's all just gonna escalate into the same chaos. All of this?" The sheep gestures around the cell, before hunching until her elbows hit her knees, defeated. "It feels like it's gotten us nowhere."

"I can help. It's my…" He trails off, unspoken words sour and tasteless, "I could fix it. You just have to convince them to let me out." 

A lie, an easy one, what could he do? He's bound to the fate of an immortal thing pushed to the sidelines, given tools and toys and people to watch, a world to build and thrive, and let crumble into dust under its own demise, lacking the power or the agency to interfere in any way that wasn't shaped like the oppressive hand of destiny. 

She looks stunned, and then her face softens into something contemplative.

"Please, I've changed. I just… I don't want to be alone." He pushes another lie on her, perhaps a modicum of truth to the words he's not going to dwell on. "I can fix it." 

She shakes her head, a broken huff of a laugh bubbling up as she stands. 

"I'm sorry, I just- I can't. I have to try and handle this on my own or the title of knight means nothing. And you… you've done too much damage. You were cruel. There's a lotta people out there that you hurt, duckling." Puffy rests a hand on his shoulder and he hates it's collective weight. "You have to reconcile with your own cruelty." 

The words sing in his sternum like the strike of a knife through the bone. 

"It's time for you to leave. _Now_." He swipes the hand off his shoulder, becoming robotic and cold. A thing that hardly consumes air or space, staring and seeing nothing but the shutter of freedom like that small gap sealed shut by an iron door.

"I'm sorry. I'll try and… I'll talk to Sam, to someone- I'll try to get you some more things, okay?" 

She leaves, her sad eyes and sad frowns taken with her, all pity and no solutions, and it hardly registers to him beyond the thankless relief of a fly buzzing out of a wide open window. 

Soon enough, he finds himself staring at the clock, spine pressed against the wall, sat back on his haunches as he stares, and stares, and stares, hands trembling against his knees. 

On to the next one, he thinks, over and over, a relentless cacophony of the conversation repeated in his head, acted out like puppets on strings before his eyes until the movements and the words grow muddled and he's left with the spin of the clock. The heat of the lava, the bubbling churn, the whisper of his own breath, legs burning from holding the same position. 

He stares at the clock. 

And he becomes a liminal being of pressed air from nostrils, cold and untouchable, an imperfection on the wall. Pressed and smeared into the obsidian, filling depthless lungs until the lights in the room seem to fade and the walls close in with each breath that grows shallower on the heels of the next one.

On the bed beside him rests a coveted book, retrieved from its hiding spot, spilled open to its final page.

_Remember. Remember. Remember._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SIDE NOTE: Just so it's not confusing, Dream at this point, and as long as he has those netherite cuffs on his wrists, he will not look human, just imagine him looking the way people tend to draw Ranboo, like more those designs with a tail and floppy ears rather than scaly no eyelids enderman; all that really needs to be understood is that he looks a lot like Ranboo but different color scheme 
> 
> Alright, so I hope that chapter came through some what!
> 
> Also I love Puffy so much and she will definitely show up more 👉👈


	6. Law of Inertia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Manifold and Quackity pay a visit. 
> 
> ⟒⎐⟒⍀⊬⏁⊑⟟⋏☌ ⟟⌇ ⎎⟟⋏⟒.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, for the record I love Jack Manifold and Quackity's characters and I'm sorry but I gotta do it to 'em
> 
> Quackity is making himself into King Dice at this rate and I love that for him honestly and Jack is trying so damn hard to be a villain ( mad respect king)
> 
> Warnings: graphic depictions of self harm, autophagia, generally distressing themes, one green guy being a general all around dick at some points 
> 
> -Dream makes a crude joke at Quackity's expense, it's baseless and implied but it's still sexual in nature, so warning for that

He thinks he's getting better at it, the keeping track part. 

It incurs a heavy toll, a constant hunger churned up from chucking potatoes into the lava, abusing potions forgone for a clearer head, for days and nights spent wondering if one was the other. For violent withdrawals to some latent grip of a drug induced haze, a poisoned mind he sweats and claws out until he's just a husk that spills its sense of self right back into the cavity of its cracked skull and prays it keeps. 

Time starting to grow thin and strange, it hardly exists at all and the heavy claws of a strange sensation constantly gnaw at his insides, the hallowed throes of starvation a constant, _constant_ reminder of an adjacent mortality. But he doesn't die, it doesn't kill him.

He learns that hunger becomes boring after a while. The pain grows dull, the mind apathetic, and the body follows with it. Each opportunity to curb it he meets with abject refusal, he won't make the same mistake, he won't lose himself, he can't. The food is poisoned. All he has to do is remember. 

But there are times when he thinks if he gives in, if he does what they want… if he just forgets, they'll- no, _no_ , they won't. He can't trust them. 

The buzzing ring of burbling silence is violent this time, a missed meal cast freshly into the hungry molten stomach of the lava. He's been trying to write, trying to distract himself with the sound of it, the feel of it, sink into the pages, the memories, the shape of the outside, the phantom taste of fresh air, but the cotton between his ears is thick and his vision is greying.

He shakes his head, palms pressed to his temples, jaw unhinged on a silent shout, a thrashing, writhing thing that sits in wheezed echoed from the empty chambers of his lungs. Harsh and winding, air wrought against unforgiving stone, and he thinks the walls are closing in again, eyes open but the light's gone out, last glimmers of hope in the fireworks that burst behind the eyelids when he shuts them with enough force to shake the space behind the optic nerve, sound jumping into the rumbles of an earthquake. 

He's hungry and it's dark. 

Explosions rumble like fists thrust against the curved fingers of his ribs, hot ash clogging his throat, leaving every breath to trickle out of him like smoke. The more he breathes, the less he feels. 

And when he holds his breath he only drowns. 

So he gulps on the air like a fish out of water, claws dragged against his scalp just to hear the scratching of nails on the hollow bone coffin.

Breathing becomes almost monumentous, a Sisyphean task of pulling air down by the fistfuls only to push it back out with too much force, breathless on the end of each until he's losing track of the timing. Clock ticking away between the chatter, the noise.

He's so hungry and it's so dark, and he dwells among the twisted statics like a beast out of time. A twisted thing made of flesh and blood and bone, all poison, all slavering and desperate, spit sloughed off his tongue to choke him when the earth beneath his fetal frame cracks and shudders, and it's anger threatens to shrivel him from the inside out. 

He's never been so hungry. It becomes a fist punched through his middle, wounds ragged and raw until even the appeal of sleeping becomes something less troublesome and more useful. Curled in on the gaping, yawning stretch of it, sharp bones of his elbows thrust into the soft length of a belly that had never experienced something as poignant and mortal as hunger. 

He'd never experienced sleep either.

Not until it had gripped him round the throat, two hands like a garrote and choked him into its arms, the sweetest momentary caress of something like death, but always disappointing. Filled with sounds and images and somehow hunger finds him there, too. 

It'd be so easy to get rid of. He just has to eat that's all, something small, anything, just once. That's it-

No. He has to remember. 

His hands fall in his lap and the netherite cuffs clink together, two solid bands of metal casting a purple glow. A little less dark, but never a beacon of hope. The blisters and scars wrung like bands of their own peek out from the edges, glaring up in soft pinks to combat the purple-blackish hue of a corrupted greenish hue. 

If he can just get them off. No more hunger, no more sleep, no more cell-

He snarls, teeth bared, clawing at the netherite cuffs, the grooves and dips of it always burning sickly hot with an enchantment. He claws until he feels them spin slick with blood, feels the catch of fur clumped and matted with it. He hunches over, scraping at them and no matter how he bends or breaks or crushes the bones in his wrist he can't-

He can't- 

He sinks his teeth into the sensitive junction of nerves and tendons-

Gnawing, tearing and twisting, blood spilt across his tongue with the squelch of fresh meat, hot and tangy, it almost, _almost_ pings the starving parts of himself, the distant thought of _food_ as he crunches down harder and swallows what doesn't drip down his chin and splash against his lap. All it does is curdle his empty stomach, clog his nose like copper coins being shoved right into his brain and he sighs, a burbling thing that makes the rogue sounds of a feral dog ripping into a fresh meal that much louder.

All the wet notes of fangs tearing flesh play in his ears on loop, a horrid jukebox tune that makes him hunch further. He readjusts the grip on his own wrist and rips his eyeteeth into it harder, a fortuitous meal in his mind's eye, viscerally afraid it'll be snatched from him now that he's found it.

It takes him a moment to fully realize where the sounds are coming from, jaws parted around a scene that's devolved into self-cannibalism. 

Spitting and gagging, he reels back, cupping his arm where blood boils to the surface from several violent tears, glinting just like a spilled pot of ink in the dim cast of light. He casts his eyes away from the ground meat of it, glaring at the obsidian walls like they're to blame. 

And they are, they always fucking are, and maybe if he just goes far enough, bites hard enough, rips deep enough, he'll pop his hand from his wrist- _maybe_.

He abandons the inane thought, shaking fingers clamped around the worst of the wound. The dull pulse from the pressure racing up his arm, chased all the way to his brain until it scatters the dredges of mad thoughts.

Chin dipped low, he chokes down open mouthed breaths, bubbles of thick blood popping obscenely in the back of his throat. The dead rumble of a stone cage echoes the sharp sound. 

Splintering memories of lifting a crude wooden spear over his head blink and shatter in the vacant opera seating of his mind. Cast in the old familiar notes of bloody palms, something snapped off the slats of that bed they'd entrusted him with.

Salvation scraped obsessively against the walls until it formed a point.

He missed so many times. Slamming the point into the obsidian with a crack of thunder, shouting, saliva gathered like the bubble of foam dripping off his lips. Frothed up from the seething depths of an inability to accept reality, like the rabbit that scrapes at the ground when it fights the snare. Slick, broken voice sloughed off a tongue with each mindless drift of words from blood filled lungs, half language, half sound.

Desperate and unhinged, until finally he'd lifted it again and knew he had the mark. He drove it into the center of his wrist, jaw popping with a howling shout as he twisted and the pain detonated like the flash of a bomb.

It didn't come off, it never comes off, always burning and heavy, and no matter how much he tried the cuffs always stayed. And when they found him halfway to severing the limb they'd just pin him down, tip a healing potion over it, and watch him howl.

He's too weak, too clumsy. No good for anything, but hunching over books and watching clocks, and nothing else.

He knows it won't work, he knows, he knows, he doesn't need the silent judgement of his own hallucinations to remind him of that. 

But maybe if he just-- maybe if he tries again, maybe it'll work. Why else would he keep trying?

Cracked and broken sentences hop and skip between animalistic growls, each one breaking off into a whining, pitiful note as he clamps his fingers over the wound hard enough to bruise the bone. He abandons the sluggish flow to paw at slick metal. The faint purple glow a mocking beacon in the pitch black yawn of insanity.

"C'mon, why won't…." He whispers it more to himself, always incomplete, never caring to finish the question. The echoing rumble of it bouncing off four walls, ears switching from pinned back to alert, catching sounds that may or may not be there. 

He forgets the rattle of his own voice, he loses the sound of redstone being activated too. 

Movements turned infinite and meaningless, caught staring into the depths of his own folly, unable to crawl out from under it.

"Oh, how the mighty do fall."

The voice silences his thoughts. 

It numbs him altogether, everything instantly clearer, easier, and the rush of adrenaline at the whiff of a threat is the soothing balm to his own spell of panic. 

Suddenly smooth and mechanical, he angles his gaze just enough to cast his eyes to the corners and make out the glint of red and blue lenses.

"Y'know, for once... I'm glad I don't remember you." He calls from the bed, a cross legged and scrawny thing, blood dripping down his chin and his arm in a manner so casual even the other doesn't comment on it, or maybe he doesn't care, and he thinks that's a rather important distinction to make. 

The intruder's steps eat up the shallow hovel of his obsidian cell, lava closing in behind him. Effectively shutting them in together, for better or worse. 

"Eh, they told me you might not. Doesn't really matter if you remember good ol' Jack Manifold though. 'Cause I've got memories enough for the both of us." The self-proclaimed _Jack Manifold_ shrugs, moving with the air of someone who wants so desperately to fill every space with his presence, but fails.

Eyes sweeping up and down the figure, he watches Jack paw through everything in the cell, sifting through all his items, flipping pages, adjusting the sloppy tilt of the clock on the wall, like the bobcat turning over stones to find the tasty mouse. Tearing it all apart, invading the corners of a careful construction with fumbling, childish fingers that make him sneer, reducing Jack Manifold to the rank of _annoying little beetle_ in his head. 

This man would not be useful. He decides it the moment he catches the deep disdain glinting behind red and blue lenses. That self-congratulating smirk stuck on too smug lips.

"You still remember Tommy, right?" Jack doesn't let him answer, "I'm sure you do, you said it yourself, he's the only thing you still give a shit about."

Dream holds his silence close, allowing for frustration to steep in a mixed bag of a refusal to give the other any sense of satisfaction. The scrutiny from the man makes him feel as if he'd been dipped in tar, the false idol ripped from its pedestal, waiting to be feathered.

"Y'know it's a bit of a problem that your brain's been knackered. Really throws a wrench in my plans for revenge-" 

"Revenge? Heh, that's funny…"

" _Funny_?"

He gets something out of Jack, something familiar that he latches on to, some spell of confusion, some lapse in that naive tightrope walk of smarminess the man trekked. 

"It's just that…" He taps a finger against his chin, head canted, eyes sarcastically at the ceiling, "I _do_ remember you, a bit; only the memorable things really. And trust me those are… well uh, they're lacking." 

He laughs, dark and long and woefully familiar, the notes of it drifting up from the pit of his stomach like an old friend, filling each word with a new sort of malice. 

"Jack Manifold, everyone's least favorite idiot." 

He grins up into Jack's face. Recalling words sanctified to parchment, a history rehearsed in the frantic desire to never forget, even if it's only ever hazy. He hones it into a tool sharp enough for killing.

"A traitor by nature, am I right? And you were- well you were always so easy to pick on. How many times have you almost died now? Ten? _Twenty?_ " 

Jack's face darkens but no words flee the man, he forges on, an anchor dropped and scraped through a coral bed, damage wreaked by the simple fact that it was a tool performing its primary function.

"And it's… it's funny that you bring up Tommy. Has he finally stopped stealing your things? Or are you still getting bullied by some kid?"

He doesn't know where it really comes from, the words spoken like he's a creature possessed, some marionette on strings, mouth opened and shut on an instinct that bubbles up in the frothing writhe of claws sunk into the loosening grasp of control, denying its sallow rot with a self-indulgent rage. 

"Fancy, fancy phrases, Dream. Surely." Jack's expression slips and slides like a snake's belly across cold tile. 

He's struck by the confidence of it, the utter certainty that makes him recoil and lose grip on his own spell of artificial confidence. Slipping up and stumbling right into a slack expression, shoulders curved away and spine collapsing on itself as the world suddenly feels smaller, louder, and Jack becomes the imposing figure, a threatening, flickering shadow back lit by lava. 

Something that had he never been shut inside a box, he would have never allowed, never entertained as a possibility besides something to laugh about. Now he's got no choice. 

"You certainly have your words still. Your little attempts to get a rise out of people, I'll give you that." Jack huffs, casting a scathing look over him, "It's admirable, really. And maybe if you weren't stuck in here, stuck looking like _that_ \-- maybe I'd have cared. But all I hear are the desperate words of some muzzled bastard who's all bark, no bite." 

"I could kill you." His voice is colder than snow at the gallows, his mainline defense boiled down to the single cast of an overused phrase.

"You think I'm stupid?" Jack laughs, bubbling and hot, acid splashed against the air. "Go ahead, big man, take a crack at it." 

He considers it for half a second, limbs tense, chin tucked low, every ounce of him honed in on every way he memorized a mortal man capable of dying, the cumulative basis to his existence that's as primal as it is unobtainable. 

"That's what I thought." Jack spits the word like he's a filthy dog begging at his feet. "Now, you're gonna sit there, and you're gonna rot. And tomorrow when I kill Tommy? There's gonna be nothing you can do about it. Feel free to tell anyone who'll listen though, doubt they'll believe you. And when it's done you'll really have nothing but this godforsaken cell."

For half a second, he considers looking to the side, breaking his sight from those red and blue lenses, that dark shape of eyes beneath the tinted glass. He can practically see the bright reds and whites of a hallucination flitting around his peripherals. A constant paranoia, a curdling sense of attachment to the catalyst of his own downfall, the origin and epicenter of calamity and chaos, an obsession with the Prometheus who brought fire in the form of sentiment to the people. And like an angry ~~god~~ he couldn't let that grudge go. 

He narrows his eyes instead, hands folded in his lap, calm and measured as he jots down a haphazard note in the burnt out corners of his mind, a timeless reminder that Jack Manifold would only ever dedicate his existence to pissing him off.

"You're not gonna kill him." 

"It's a nuke, you- you understand what that is, right?"  
Jack stammers, hand twisted around something at his side, some piece of paper, a goddamned script, and isn't that rich?

"Yeah." He knows the old world bombs better than most, knows the way they flash and burn in half an instant, and he thinks he can make his words just as incendiary if he tries. "But you're not- trust me, _you're_ not gonna kill him."

"I'll be back here same time tomorrow tellin' you differently."

"It's a date." 

He dares the non-believer to drag himself back before the bloodied pulpit and spit more false prayers. 

He is left victorious among the rattled hollow fingers of numbness when nothing shaped like Jack Manifold ever slinks its way back into his cell. 

\--

Watching darkness eat the light on pale pages, he almost misses the grinding tune of shifting levers and pistons.

The lava curtain pulls back on a man in blue satin, a fancy three piece suit dotted with three golden buttons down the left, a red cravat to pull the whole ensemble together. 

When he finally steps off the platform and onto obsidian it's with the gait of something cocky, a loud thing with loud steps, a confidence that jangles like plastic chips thrown across green felt tables, slick with smoke and flimsy poker cards. A thousand exploited vices.

A dice is pinned to his broach with some sort of symbol, an _LV_ in fancy gold lettering upon closer inspection. It glints in the glowstone, just as gleaming as the lopsided grin the man tosses into the air. 

He doesn't stop writing, stuck in a stream of consciousness trailed down the margins when he tosses the cocky man a short glance and resumes his task. He really only needed to care when the guards finally decided to show up for their usual routine, or at worst, the warden. 

Otherwise the revolving damn door of his cell stood as the only tangible passage of time aside from the clock. 

Something clicks in his head, gaze turned back up, that particular shade of blue greeting him. He studies the out of place beanie; and who the hell ruins a suit like that? 

It all adds up quick enough, spelt out in the misshapen letters of a name, half written in a common tongue, half scrawled in something closer to the symbols of enchantment. 

Still, it reads clear as day and Quackity snatches the book from his lap, flipping through the pages, fingers smudging the drying ink with reckless abandon. 

"I see you still remember me." Quackity slams the book shut, tossing it straight into a corner of the cell. "Lemme tell you, I am goddamned honored, man." 

"Don't flatter yourself..." He bites out on rusty vocal cords, head swinging towards the book's final resting place, limbs twitching to retrieve it.

There's a long silence that stretches, time always warped in its march until he can't tell if it's been seconds or hours, and the moment he parts his jaw, voice found on a full breath ready to dismiss the glaring annoyance- he's cut off.

"Y'know, this suits you, Dream." Quackity looks down his nose, chin tipped. "You always wanted to keep us in the goddamn dark ages, scraping around in the dirt like a bunch of fuckin' animals. Now you get to live like one while the rest of us move the hell on." 

He doesn't afford him a reply, staring and numb, the words are nothing more than white noise, something to compound the ring in his ears, all unamusing things that hardly draw his attention beyond a dull glare. He just wants to keep writing.

Quackity quirks a brow at the silence, something dissatisfactory in it because he steps forward, fast enough to crowd his space all at once. So suddenly, so without warning that _danger_ lights up in flaring neons across his mind, puncturing every organ with a devastating shock- 

It's unbidden fire ignites in his nerves, a cloying violent scream of every instinct dipped in magma, forcibly honed by hours of no one and nothing, just a creature of pure hypervigilance and paranoia wearing a flimsy social suit. 

An overreaction. And he busts out of it with a snarl, rattling and shaking, grinding it's way through the body he's trapped in. 

He abandons all sense of humanity on a scramble backwards, teeth parted like a snake rearing its head back to strike.

"Cute." Quackity is all saccharine and mocking, taking a few steps back. "Why the hell do you even look like that anyways? Thought gods were supposed to be made of tougher shit." 

"I… I could ask you the same thing." His voice is small, eyeing the suit with disdain and distantly remembering the man to be someone who was often chronically underdressed.

"Listen, I'm a changed man." Quackity sweeps his arm out to the side, a mockery of a bow, "I've built something, Dream. I know that's hard for you to understand 'cause all you ever cared about was blowing perfectly good shit up. But we've finally got something that works. Something that people are actually thriving under- in goddamn _peace_. I'm doing what you couldn't and honestly I've got you to thank for that, pal. 

That whole taking people's shit and holding it over 'em? Yeah, turns out that's actually pretty smart. And it's pretty fuckin' easy with the right _economy_." 

Quackity moves closer, the words he speaks thunking against his skull like the slow notes of a sour song. He tracks the swaying steps with a tongue held between his teeth, eyes narrowed. 

Quackity stoops, his face close to his.

"You see I'd get into the semantics of it all, but you'd just forget that shit, right? That's why you're still here, asshole." 

Quackity ruffles the fur on top of his head like he's just a damn dog, smug hands shoved right back into satin lined pockets as he turns away. 

Dream presses himself away, spine molded into the wall with such quaking force the very stone threatens to swallow him up until he's just as dead. A glare is quick to set in. 

Because the thing about being trapped in the same place is that it gets boring, annoying even, and the sheer apathy it incurs will only ever mount into something unchecked, a simmering pot welded shut from the inside left to gather steam. Pressure always set to rise until the metal has no choice but to give.

And there's almost nothing left to hold him back now, not when Quackity's words bang a hammer against the sides of his tightly shut capacity for rage, mind boiled over into easy rhythms, conjuring up old words that he knows he only need to lob across the air and make sure they hit the mark. 

"You're such an idiot." 

"Excuse me?" Drawn out, Quackity turns with a brow raised. 

Like the suit wearing prick had the audacity to pretend he didn't hear those words, couldn't possibly fathom them, and the disbelief only spurs him on, breaths growing shallow and words easier to recall as he sits on the edge of the bed.

"You're gonna fail. You are a fuck up, Quackity. Like tell me how's- how is _this_ gonna be any different?" 

He hangs his head, a nasty laugh twisted and sharp, wrenched straight from the writhing belly of something that hasn't quite been stolen from him, yet.

"My memory could be totally fucked and I'd still- I'd remember that. I mean I probably wouldn't even _have_ to 'cause it's literally all you do." He sneers, voice biting, "You fuck up. You are a dumbass. You get used, Quackity! And it's -it's all you were good for! And it's not like that's changed, everyone's probably using you right now and you're so _stupid_ you don't even realize it!"

It's crude, all stones thrown at fragile thoughts, and more find themselves sliding into the arsenal on his tongue, gripped in the space between his palms where he curves the shaking planes of empty fists against the air, grasping nothing and wishing for something, _anything_ to give.

"Shut up, shut the hell up-"

"C'mon, Quackity." He drawls sickly sweet, just like they're old friends. Coaxing the other to come closer, stick his fingers right through the bars of the proverbial enclosure. "Listen, I'll even tell you where the book is. I mean, you might as well bring Schlatt back, get a few bruises on those knees while you're at it-"

The first punch is all the excuse he needs.

He probably deserves it, but there's no logic left to spare when he launches himself at Quackity. The crackling screech of a communicator coming online rends the air when the body beneath him smacks the obsidian.

Heavy kicks slam into his middle, throwing him off, just enough for Quackity to try to claw himself up and away.

"Get the fuck- _Sam_!" Quackity shouts into the communicator, half crawling, half standing.

It's a mistake to turn his back at all.

He grabs Quackity's ankle, yanking him with enough force to send his chin cracking against the stone. Quackity gets as far as flipping onto his back when he straddles him and swings the first punch. 

Caught up in the grip of something hot and red, rage strikes on every beat of his pulse that whooshes in his ears and rips up the length of his arms, echoing on thrown fist after fist. 

His knuckles strike the hard bone of someone's forearms thrown over their head. 

He doesn't hold back, doesn't even care to change trajectory, keeping the squirming body pinned as he does everything in his derisive power to wipe that smile off that smarmy face, finish the job that some pig with a pickaxe had started and see that scar on his lip go all the way through to the back of his fucking brain.

If Quackity wanted an animal, an animal he'd get. 

And he stops just long enough for Quackity to let his guard down, the duck brained fool dropping his arms only to catch a glimpse of a treacherous snarl and a fist aiming to cave his teeth in. 

The pain ricochets across his own molars, flashing and hot but it's easy to ignore the tang of blood when he's so used to choking on it. He doesn't care, reckless abandon found in hearing the man under him sing the symphony of wounded prey every time bone crunches and he sees red cast across his vision each time the landing blow shakes up the stretch of his arm. 

The fight devolves into a scuffle across the ground. Reduced to two dogs battling over the last scrap of rotten meat, flea bitten and feral things that soon swap fists for claws and respectability for gnashing teeth sunk into flailing limbs. 

Hands drag him back, forcing him straight down into a kneel, knees smacking the obsidian.

Eyes wrung with bruises, one half shut by a nasty cut, Quackity scrapes himself off the ground and scrambles back, hiding behind the safety of netherite armor.

Quackity casts him a parting glare. A thing that screams, _you're fucking dead,_ as knuckles scoop blood from a busted mouth and nose, and he flees altogether, chasing safety on waspish steps as someone sends the stone platform back across the chasm.

He's effectively abandoned, left with the three guards that stay behind, and it's certainly not the first occasion.

He bucks against the palms on his shoulders, twin sets of fingers twisted into the junction of his elbows to pin his arms behind his back like he's a bird for the slaughter. Left to shake his head from side to side, he scrapes together a defense in the form of curses soaked in bloody saliva spat at the feet of his captors, seething and mindless, nothing like the person he'd learned to be outside these walls.

"Dream, stand down."

Super heated numbness fills his limbs at the sound of _that_ voice and he casts his gaze towards its source, Quackity's little savior, that guard with the white headband, the one so often patronizingly nice, yet simple to anger. He doesn't have to look to know it's the cat and the demon at his sides, pinning him down.

He knows them, knew them, just… it'd been right there. It had been so easy to recall and now it's all murky, muddled and even when he looks the guard in the eyes, it tries to elude him. The shape of fingers swiped through a babbling brook, trying to fetch blood in rushing water.

The guard repeats his command, voice firmer, knuckles bone white around the haft of a trident. 

He laughs, breathless and empty, and allows himself to sag bonelessly until he's dropped against the welcoming embrace of the obsidian. Back bent low, nose nearly brushing the stone, he holds his breath and waits for the sound of the guards to retreat. Waits for the silence. Waits for the only sounds to be the gurgle of lava and the churning _tick tock_ of his clock.

_"Sapnap?"_

The warden's voice crackles through the air. 

His stomach lurches.

"Sam."

_"Go ahead and destroy everything."_

Eyes wide, the blood drains from his body and the world trembles with the crushing weight of his dropping heart. 

"Torturing him like that isn't gonna help his mental state." Bad chimes in, uncaring for the fact that the warden might hear those words.

It's a scrap of hope, a thing that brightens in his chest as he casts his gaze up towards the glowing eyes of the tall demon, the guard having been the champion in ensuring he always had new things, even if it was as simple as a rubber ball or a tiny potted plant destined to wither and die.

Plastic bends and cracks under the force with which Sapnap cradles the communicator in his hand, eyes cast to the ground. 

"Sapnap, we should just go talk to Sam, discuss it before we do anything rash. Maybe get him to come to a compromise." Bad reasons. "He hurt Quackity, I get that- but he still has rights. We can figure out a more humane punishment… something that's more constructive, right?"

Sapnap hesitates on a nod, lips thin. 

"I'm not…" Sapnap starts, thumb hovering over the receiver as he speaks into it, "I'm not- I don't think we should take _everything_ , sir. The prisoner is..." 

Sapnap trails off, communicator dropped near his chin, the static crackle from the other side plays an awful tune before it's broken with a brief screech and then silence, a chilling pause before clipped words. 

_"He knew the consequences. He's gotta start from scratch."_

The comm line shuts off with a final damning click. 

Sapnap casts Dream a single look, a single moment of doubt that he clings to with bruising force. It pleads in every note of silence that the guard doesn't condemn him, and he doesn't pause to consider that begging silently on his knees was something he would have rather died than allow himself to ever do.

"Bad, we have to. He'll just hire new guards. And they'll- trust me, it'll be worse." 

"I- but we can't just…" Bad sighs, "we'd be just as cruel as _him_."

Sapnap clips the communicator back to his belt, eyes dark. "It's- it'll be fine, okay? I'm sure Sam'll let him earn everything back and maybe he won't- y'know, freakin' attack people after this." 

Bad concedes with a dipped chin and a flat frown. 

They grab everything. 

And he kneels there, forgetting he can scrape himself off the ground. 

Every scrap is tossed wholly into the wide open catch of the lava pool, the chest of books first, the bed following, stray papers lobbed without hesitation. He watches them flash and burn, bright pops of light that burst like solar flares and leave no remaining trace of those shitty participation trophies he'd spaced out on an empty shelf, as if to prove to every onlooker that he'd lived some modicum of a life once worth something. 

His clock remains-

No _the_ clock. There's no _his_ , he doesn't… it doesn't matter. 

But he stares at that single splash of spinning color on the wall and his blood curdles. 

Shaped so innocently like something he'd taken for granted, something he never realized he _needed_ until he lost everything in a matter of seconds. Sharp breaths wrestled only as shallow as the top half of his lungs where he hunches on the ground and loses everything in a matter of seconds. 

He thought it'd be louder. Brighter. Like the black rain and white light of a thousand explosions. Instead it's quiet. 

A dull, rumbling ache that sweeps from his ankles to his scalp, a creeping desperation that grips him by the throat and squeezes until he's scrambling to his feet to escape the noose. Words pried like stubborn splinters from the tissue of his throat as he spews them with the coughing choke of a dying fire.

"C'mon, you won't- you woul- you can't just leave me here with _nothing_."

"Stand down." 

The sharp prongs of a trident swing towards his face, the glare down the length of it shakes him like thunder.

He pushes it down with a casual hand, fingers sparking where they meet electrified metal.

"You can't… you can't punish me for defending myself, _Sapnap._ " The name tastes like blood, or maybe it's just the split gums. It holds less weight than a spat curse, the words clumsy and slow.

Black clouds form in Sapnap's eyes, a callous and cold being where something bright once burned.

"We're taking the clock too, right?" Antfrost hovers near the wall, thieving paws reaching for that circle of glass, that dias of salvation and safety and everything that he can't stand to lose.

"Take it." 

"Sapnap- wait!"

Bad's last plea goes ignored as the clock is ripped from the wall.

It's more than just instinct to lunge for it. 

He's stopped short, vision flashing with a lurch, fingers brought up to slip against metal as he chokes.

Breathy things punch from his chest when he tries to conjure up pathetic sounds in the spirit of a shattered ribcage and a skewered heart, impaled like a fish on the business end of a trident.

Bad's face hovers in the corner of his vision. Glowing line of his mouth parting fast and harsh, words flung as black claws grab at his shoulders and push Sapnap away, the trident dropping from the latter's hands. A slack face and wide eyes beneath the white stretch of a headband are the last things he sees before the room spins and he's dragged straight to the ground-

He gasps awake. 

Flat on his back, fingers fumbling through the tattered holes of fabric over his sternum, he grasps at his chest, shaking palms pressed over the thrum of a heart as he sits up. That leaping and skipping thing that betrays him with each tumultuous thud. 

He casts his gaze around the stripped cell, long since abandoned by everything. Those bare black bones pitted down to the marrow grin back at him, all smug whispers of _I told you so_. 

The clock doesn't tick. 

It doesn't tock, it doesn't do **anything**.

And he'll… he'll be fine. 

He doesn't need it, no attachments, right? Why would he give a shit about a stupid clock? 

He didn't care about the books, he didn't care about the bed, all meager meaningless things, he'd accepted their demise quick enough when he watched them be cast into the hungry maw of molten rock. That was easy, this was easy. 

He should have never cared- he didn't. He **doesn't**. 

He doesn't care. 

Even as that statement contradicts all his previous actions and he mourns their untimely death in the forceful sense that he- not the clock, or the books, or the bed, or the discs, or the chaos- is the one they shut inside the coffin and buried. 

He jams his fingers into his palms, shoulders drawing up towards his ears. 

And the world starts to warp into jagged lines the longer he looks at obsidian and tries to find something to interrupt the endless stretch of it. 

The lava curtain only serves as a looping eyesore, not enough, never enough, senses long tuned to drown out the dripping hiss. 

The silence grows, the nothing grows.

A deafening crescendo that forces his spine to curve, head shoved into trembling hands as he drives his elbows into his thighs and tries with all his might to fold himself in half. 

Jaw cracked wide enough to pop, the noise that flees him is emptier than the air. A backwards, aberrant attempt at a sound that belongs solely in the maws of tall, wandering figures with bright purple eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get marginally less distressing after this, but still remain dark 
> 
> Sorry if this is just strange as fuck, i'm having trouble writing coherently cause I have actual brain rot and shit but hey, that makes the memory stuff and things to do with Dream losing his mind easier to write 
> 
> I also did not realize how prevalent autophagia was in prisoners until I looked it up and that's honestly ;_; prison and especially solitary confinement really fucks people up and so we're going to get into that- also gonna get into what happens to people when they get _out_ too (hint hint) 
> 
> Also running with the Ranboo and Dream are somewhat of the same origins/somehow have related pasts that have to do with the End and Endermen like let's gooo  
> Will I ever seriously address it beyond vague allusions and hints? Only time will tell
> 
> Big shout-out to anyone still reading this rollercoaster ride, sorry you got strapped in for this :)
> 
> ps catch me having no idea if when it's appropriate to officially tag characters once they show up more than once


	7. The Monomaniacal Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ⟟⏁'⌇ ⟊⎍⌇⏁ ⏃ ⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔. ⟟⏁'⌇ ⟊⎍⌇⏁ ⏃ ⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔. ⟟⏁'⌇ ⟊⎍⌇⏁ ⏃ ⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔. 
> 
> When we all fall asleep where do we go?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This turned into a literal fever dream of a chapter. The amount of symbolism and metaphors and allusions in this is actually insane and it's gonna be about as strange and twisted as nightmares actually are. 
> 
> Any depictions of other characters in this are filtered through Dream's pov AND the lense of a nightmare. I genuinely love all the characters on the smp and all that good stuff, but in order to write this I had to condense them into warped versions of themselves sometimes smh. 
> 
> Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, depictions of Derealization (but also like not really?), Distressing content typical of violent nightmares, very very unreliable narrator (!), graphic tooth pulling
> 
> I wrote most of this on like zero sleep so 🥴 it's a wild ride

It's hard for him to do anything but sleep anymore.

He'd spent more than a lifetime never really seeing a point, never being tired enough to to just lay down and let himself be that vulnerable. The only time sleep ever came was for serious injuries and even those were simple stretches of darkness. Never nightmares or dreams, never that which he'd named himself after.

Now he relies on them for entertainment, relies on them for a measure of coping with the sheer boredom of nothing and no one. 

And even when his dreams grow into distressing and twisted things, it's not as if he has a choice. He hopes they don't start to fade, hopes they don't grow into grey, dull images of only the walls, of only the warden and the guards. He hopes and knows it's only a matter of time. 

He doesn't know how many days it's been since Quackity's visit, he doesn't know how many days it's been since his cell was emptied out, since he lost the clock. Nothing to mark down how many days he _thinks_ have passed.

If he had to guess he'd say a thousand, when he thinks about it too much it feels like a few hours.

His life, if he can even call it that, is spent in suspended animation. A listless malaise. He can't figure out if it has more to do with the oppressive heat of the lava, the malnutrition, or the sheer boredom. 

There's no clock to watch, no books to write in, nothing but the water basin remains and after awhile even that stopped being entertaining. Drowning himself too much only made the warden mad. And even he threatened to stop showing up if he kept up the behavior. 

So he often sits in the corner of the cell, faces the lava curtain and waits for a pounding ice pick headache to hit from the intense contrast between the molten rock's glow and the obsidian's light eating surface. After awhile it makes him dizzy. And awhile after that, it makes him slump low against the ground, forearm over his eyes to block it out. 

Ears ringing, mouth dry. His pulse pounds in his ears and even that is not enough to keep him awake. Eventually his eyelids grow too heavy, the cell too warm, his limbs too numb- and the world collapses into black. 

\--

There's the endstone and the dark bleeding skies. The winding towers and the deceiving landscape, and he knows instantly that something isn't right, that _he_ isn't right. Caught in the fractured narrative of a nightmare. And for every time he recognizes this, his only reward is to forget it. Vision left distorted in hazes of purple particles that swirl whenever he turns his head.

He moves with a weightless gate, that thing of no fatigue, no concept of gravity or friction, trekking across the warped stage of twisted memories. Greeted by a sinking feeling at every blurry landmark and hazy figure, all of it making a vague amount of sense as feverscapes are prone to do.

Soon enough, he picks his way over the ruins of an end city. Never remembering how he got there only that he clambers over the gutted remains of purpur and endstone towers, something half gone, tilted to lean like a fallen soldier over the endless catch of the void.

The missing chunk is like something took a bite out of the endstone, or more aptly the tired rock finally gave out under immense pressure. Like the sinkholes and craters that swallow cities whole in the precarious lands of the Overworld, the End crumbles at the edges like a virulent disease that refuses to be culled, aided by the infection of countless explosions.

He clambers under a broken pillar, the triangle it forms just large enough to duck through, a little entrance between a crumpled building and tonnes of debris. His palm rasps against the cracked surface as thousands of palms once did before his. All of it gone in a flashing instant, and it's a version of destruction that is numb and distant even as he finds himself weaving towards the epicenter of it and intimately recalling the rhythms. 

Endermen wander the wreckage, grabbing blocks of rubble in their claws only to carry them to another crumbling island, pushed and pulled around like toy soldiers half discarded. Uncanny vultures uncaring for whom or what once dwelled there, what hands or claws had brushed stone walls and carved life into them. It didn't matter, they were just blocks to build from now. 

Life snuffed from the city like a thumb pressed into a little squirming ant, thousands more still in line, just an inconsequential thing, and it would always be on to the next one, and the next one.

The endermen raise their heads at his presence, and he draws his shoulders up higher, tail brought tighter to his calf as he makes himself smaller and knows he still stands out sorely against the surroundings. A blip of green in a world that lacked it. 

Their purple eyes burn bright as stars, almost as bright as those cosmic figures that stand far taller, far more imposing but too prideful, too apathetic to wander far from an ivory tower. 

He skirts around the endermen, head down and mind quiet, worried if he draws too close, thinks too loud, they'll know. And he's not sure _what_ they'll know, can't quite remember why or how that matters, but it tastes of conspiracy and betrayal, the sharp bitter tang of gunpowder and soot. A concussive sense of paranoia better suited for something still capable of immense guilt.

The feeling hounds the base of his brain and keeps him skirting around any and all signs of life, eyes cast to the corners like a skittish animal. All with the grim thought that if he meets an enderman's gaze for even a second too long, his own will grow just as dull and defeated. 

After long enough spent clambering over rubble, he finds who he's looking for. Never realizing he was searching for someone in the first place until he'd spotted their silhouette and that tug at the cavity in his chest had suddenly dissipated. 

There, sitting huddled at the edge of destruction, is a familiar figure that he knows only in the long halls of his mind as a friend, or at least, he always assumed.

Something a little more than half-enderman, both of cursed origins and a life never truly allowed to be lived. They were always pushed to the brink of an existence, cast in blacks and speckled whites, dull green eyes tacked on like an afterthought.

He thinks it's only a passing oddity that they never told him their name. And perhaps it just makes sense, they never wanted one. They never took well to the ones he'd throw at them with wide grins and bubbling laughs, thinking it's only fair-

But they'd brush the monikers off with half-hearted glares and begrudgingly smiles thrown from toothy fangs.

Now, still nameless, they sit on that newly formed cliff. A one person vigil spent mourning another piece lost to the tune of careless governance, or perhaps just blind faith.

Long legs dangling over the edge, hands fisted in their lap. Every sign points to the fact that everything is far from fine. 

Drawing closer only stirs something rough and cutting in his stomach, that drag of razor wire through his organs and down to his toes that turn each step into a complex dance over invisible eggshells. A vulnerability that he hates with a passion.

Still, he inches forward until he sinks down beside them, shoulder to shoulder, a nostalgic thing accompanied by a long stare out into that vast nothing just the same.

Sitting beside them is the easy part, convincing himself to speak is something else altogether.

He opens his mouth, breath wrangled down in the hopes of forming words only to snap shut when he reconsiders.

They don't even blink at the hushed sound. Casting their dead stare down, down, down. Eyes fixed and dark like the clouds that gather over fields of green and stretch the shadows.

Once bright things having long since faded and joined the company of empty frowns. Vibrancy dissolved by thankless duty and aimless ambition.

"What are you doing here?" 

The words strike him, angry and bitter. His tongue refuses to conjure a defense. 

"I don't… I don't know." He settles for the truth, lame and jumbled.

"That's what you always say." The black and white figure sighs, "like somehow you stumble here by accident and we both know that isn't true."

Their words are rough, slipping between enchanted and ender as if they can't make up their mind. As if they don't have a choice.

They slump forward, elbows striking knees. A warped mirror of himself, darker and taller, something a bit sharper around the edges. 

Together they sit in silence, hands fisted in laps, chins tucked, too old to be the kids they once were, but still young enough to be that liminal space between. Naive and brash and too weary, dealt cards that they never know how to wage a collective war against. 

"I told you it would only get worse." He bites out, harsher than intended.

"So… you've come to gloat then?"

"No. No, I'm here to bargain."

"For what?" They scoff.

"Your loyalty." He looks over, words mild, "you're either against Them or you're not."

They turn to face him fully, that smatter of white flecks cast so vibrantly across dark cheeks. Always a splash of stars that shake and shudder where their face bends and breaks, and words are traded for a venomous glare, teeth parted on the beginnings of a snarl. 

He knows he's fucked up. 

"You haven't changed." They spit it on a hiss, getting to their feet with a finality that leaves him reeling with the sting of it. 

And he's changed, he's changed so damn much that he doesn't understand how anyone could muster the audacity to claim otherwise. It's like a flashing sign, a mocking arrow sitting over his head always pointing it out. To have it spit back in his face makes his blood boil, temper thin and fraying-

_Since when did he care?_

He scrambles after them, answering his own question of weakness as he grabs their arm.

"Just listen-" 

They wrench it out of his grip, eyes flashing purple. A warning.

He crowds their space in turn, heedless and brash, uncaring of ears set back and fangs parted when he affords them the same treatment.

"Listen to me." The words rumble in the back of his throat, and even up on the pads of his toes he's still only barely nose to nose with them, "What the hell are you still clinging to? Are you- aren't you tired of this?" 

They give a nasty laugh, sarcastic and jagged. "You think you're any better? You think _you're_ the winning side?" 

"I know I am." He replies, cold and sure.

The ender steps back, putting enough space between them for the air to grow cold.

"There aren't any sides. There were _never_ any sides. Because sides don't work- they never work." Their eyes stay down, syllables edged into a sharpness that comes from a throat constricted by grief, by loss, that depthless throe of sadness, "There's you and then there's Them, and you forced everyone in between that. You did that, that blood is on your hands. I won't… I won't let you smear it on mine."

"You- you know I'm not the villain, right?"

"I'd argue that you're not much of a hero, either." They bark and bite the words back, gaze twisted up to meet the shattered horizon, stretched frame hunched with a back breaking burden. "Gain a little perspective. _You_ wanted this." 

He steps back once and then twice. A hesitance sprouting with the inability to keep his chin raised, his frame steady, even the smallest thoughts and movements too over complicated.

The accusations are difficult to understand, hard to decipher like cotton soaked in mineral spirits, shoved into every crevice of his brain. Dizzy, wrong, he raises his hands to cup the sides of his head. Palms pressed tight over pounding ears as if to keep the hot liquid of a melting mind from spilling out. 

And that black and white figure, that body always stood on the opposing side, forges on. Hands cutting through the air, shoulders jumping, always an anger to match. "You do terrible, _terrible_ things and you don't- you never think about the consequences because they don't affect you, right? Because they're fun, _right_?"

"You don't know anything about me." He cuts the phrase from his lips on a conviction that nothing could strike it down. 

"Oh, I know you. I know you better than you know yourself." 

They loom over him, purple caught behind the snarl of their teeth. 

He catches a glimpse of his own face reflected in their eyes, a lingering phantom trapped in the same toxic greens, a loathing greater than what must have burned in Cain's eyes as he lifted the stone to slaughter his own brother. 

"What makes you think I don't? You think I don't- you think I don't understand?" They push him back until he stumbles, and when his eyes gravitate towards the ground, they just force his chin back up, _"I am you."_

All in a blink, a breath, on the snapped fingers of realization and the click of a lighter; the world breaks like glass. 

Shards of bright endstone and black void shatter to set the next stage. 

He tries to stumble from it. A clumsy, sickened animal backing itself straight into a corner, spine rammed against stone as he twists and squirms at the trapped sensation. Left with a weakness that he doesn't know how to survive because he'd only ever forced it on others just to keep himself from confronting it.

And the words, those sour phrases, they still ring in his ears and his legs give out. He sinks unbidden to his knees, eyes screwed shut against the scrutiny of greens. Head bowed, spine bent, his body forms the curve of irreverent supplication, the world spun and spun and spun like a clock.

He sways with it, nausea climbing up his vertebrae like the rungs of a ladder. There is nothing he can offer but the same pointed fingers, the same language of violence.

And it spins, and spins, and spins. 

It brews his blood into a poison he can't spit out.

Ears ringing, breaths fast, he opens his eyes to a tiny room, dark walls pressing in on all sides. Static eats at his vision.

Something cold splashes against his head, a ticklish trail left in its wake down his cheek. He leans back, dodging the purple tears only to raise shaking hands in hopes of catching the next.

It splashes into the muddy mix of black powder on his palms. The glowing swill caught in scarred hands cupped like claws against the air, some thankless invocation to an existence reduced to **this**. Head tipped back, mouth half parted, the crying obsidian bleeds before his eyes.

When did they end up inside?

When was he thrown into a room that shakes and shudders? Spruce signs tacked up like half-crazed mementos, desperation marked by how deep the iron nails are sunk into the wood, gouges left to form desperate words; 

_DREAM IS THE REASON_

_It should be everyone against Dream_

_You are fine._

_Don't choose a side. Choose people._

The cage and it's rigid walls heave with every breath, cracking and bleeding and caught perpetually in the throes of panic.

The floor, the _stone_ , that bed of rock remains cold, a puzzle of slick grooves dug straight into the bones of his knees, salt water lingering in the flashing pools and on a stifled tongue.

Moist and chilling it prickles at his skin. He eyes the curtain of water without comprehension, too used to a lifetime spent choking down air made hot and dry by miles of dripping lava.

And then it hits him, falling from a kneel into a tight curl, pressed into the corner of that damp obsidian room. He stares at the shape of freedom and doesn't know how he can ever bring himself to catch it.

He remembers… he _remembers_ ; it can never truly be called a cage if there's a door.

There's a sound. Words. Something muffled by a palm catching hitched sobs and the room grows colder, the obsidian weeps harder and he props his chin on his knees, wraps his arms around his legs and stares across the panic room. Right at the new silhouette molding itself into the opposite corner-

A figure split down the middle, eyes a familiar green and a burning red, a crown made crooked by the claws that push through tangled hair, twisting desperately in the strands. 

_Ranboo._

Perhaps the name doesn't mean anything beyond the basic sounds now. Still, it _almost_ means something when he stares at Ranboo and thinks he's never seen something look so broken when it cries. 

A hand pressed tight over a mouth, legs drawn up close, sticks of TNT laid like offerings to a false god at Ranboo's feet. A frame shaking on violent inhales that are too quick to fly back out, bright tears spilling over the edge of a bright palm, tail curled around his ankles. It's pitiful, like watching a rabbit struggle for air. 

Fancy suit, fancy clothes, fancy crown, fancy shoes, all dressed up for the occasion. Like the kid's playing a game of who can cry harder at his own funeral.

Dream presses his fingers into patterns on his knees and picks apart the threads of his expired thoughts. Brittled by rot, his lip twists in a snarl, a last defense left to bleed wordless into the black air, all teeth and gums, and he knows every deed he's accused of is collapsed right in front of him. 

Ranboo flinches, looking up at the sound, eyes cast between the gaps of his fingers, the pupils shrunk until they're almost gone, "You're not- it's not real."

Dream shoves the knuckles of a fist up under his own chin. Arms tucked behind the wall of his legs, he curls tighter and stares across the room.

"It's not real, it's not real, it's not- it's not-" 

Ranboo's mantra dissolves into sounds and syllables, crunching notes of cracking bones and jaws. 

They both try to wake up.

"What do you want from me?"

He tries to speak, but his tongue is trapped against the roof of his mouth. And what would he say? What's left? Could he even bark and howl loud enough to drown out the sound?

No, he can't… he can't even remember. 

The irony isn't lost on him. He scrapes nails down the side of his face, fingers curled into fists until he pushes knuckles into the meat of his cheek, the soft spot of his temple. Driving the bone into the tissue as he cants his head and bares his teeth. Trying to drive some point into his brain, but it just won't stick. 

His eyes slide across the room and he reads the words on the first sign he sees. "I don't know."

It's an honest enough answer.

A hand brushes through his hair, featherlight and foreign, and he looks up, practically falling over himself to both lean into and away from it.

No one is there and he only manages to sprawl against the slick floor. Heaving sharp breaths, staring down at the backs of his palms, relics of damp skin, of fur, of wild things that jump between being human and not.

He draws his fingers into a fist and pushes himself back up.

Eyes hard, he stares forward, s,tares at the dark torso of an obscured figure standing in front of him, stares at the disk they offer in a gloved hand and he takes it without question.

When he looks up at their face, he sees only a tilted smile before they disappear.

It's just him and Ranboo again. The latter preoccupied with staring at the jukebox in the center of the floor. A strange sort of calm and composed when just moments before the half-ender had been nigh hysterical.

He turns the disk over in his hand. The notes whisper in the back of his mind.

"⌿⌰⏃⊬ ⟟⏁."

"Why?"

"⟟⏁'⌇ ⊬⍜⎍⍀⌇. ⎅⍜⋏'⏁ ⊬⍜⎍ ⍀⟒⋔⟒⋔⏚⟒⍀?"

 _"No I- I can't… I can't remember."_ His voice rasps, thin and weak. Frowning, he catches his reflection in the purple and white plastic at the center. 

"⎅⍜⟒⌇ ⟟⏁ ⋔⏃⏁⏁⟒⍀? ⊬⍜⎍ ☊⏃⋏'⏁ ⌇⏃⊬ ⋏⍜."

It doesn't matter? No, that's not quite right. It does, it should, it should _matter_ , he should have some sort of say, some illusion of a grasp on his own narrative. 

He sits with the knowledge that he doesn't. 

Forced forward by it, he slides the vinyl into the slot of the jukebox and waits.

A rusty melody chirps out. Getting crisper with each note before it suddenly fades behind a wall of static. 

Scratchy and rough, an awful backwards tune churns out of the speakers. Scuffed like an ancient radio station broadcasting through space and time. Between the jaunty cacophony, a voice filters through.

Gravely comical, he thinks he recognizes it. Familiar, like a particular shade of blue, a laugh, a smarmy grin. 

He leans forward to better catch the sound.

`"You stand as the accused, without alibi, without defense, and thus you serve a sentence as the preemptively damned. Tell the good folks back home, what do you plead?"`

He meets Ranboo's eyes. They plead opposites, not sure who uttered the _guilty_ and who uttered the _not_.

The room floods with water like the end of a held breath. It crashes over and swallows him whole, dashing his skull against obsidian in order to spit him right back out into darkness. 

He blinks and he's standing back in the End, met with two green eyes and scathing words. A black and white figure absent of any red. 

_"-and it's all you've ever done. You have made everything so much worse."_

He flinches back at their accusation, cold enough to form ice in his stomach. He steps back, head shaking, thrown right back into it, forgetting he's all but arguing with himself, arguing with **nothing**.

" _I_ made things worse?" He bites back.

"It's all you do. You're never one to just sit it out? No, it's all-" They sigh, voice cracking.

"All what?"

" **You**. It's all you- it's always you!" They throw their palm out to the side, words stumbling in their haste to leave curled lips, "Because I didn't ask for this. I didn't want this. I didn't want- nobody wanted this. We were fine, I was fine-"

"What? Do you want a goddamn apology? Well, I'm _sorry_ ," He spits the words, never more insincere, "I am- I'm sorry I actually did something." 

There's a beat of silence, the both of them pressed into each other's space, two sides of the same coin, the same sharp lines of anger. 

They look down their nose at him and he's never felt so small.

"Every day that you fight for control, every day that you drag others into it. Look where it gets us-" They point to the destruction of the end city, "and there's no winning, you'll never win and nothing's ever going to change. Even if you killed Them. They'll just come back, something else would come back-" 

Exasperated they bite off their own words, chasing it up with a glare, a huff and finally something more collected, "I mean, what are you fighting? Fate? _Destiny?_?"

Dream steps back, arm raised in a half shield as they back him up against his own crumbling frustration. It crackles in his chest and he knows it's only a matter of time before it gives.

"You're a rusty link in an error chain. And it's about time you understood that if you're given a role?" They shove fingers into his sternum, pushing until he stumbles, "You're better off sticking to it." 

"Fuck, you're..." he sneers, tongue loose and sharp, "You're as braindead as them- don't you get it? Aren't you- aren't you scared?"

He sweeps his arm to the side, head swinging to match, angled sarcastic and cold towards the nearest enderman, "They will fuck you for the rest of your life and no one- _no one_ wants to talk about it, no one wants to do anything about it. You- you're just a pawn! You are a means to an end. They say jump and you- you sit there, tail wagging, and ask how high." 

"That's life," they deadpan.

"And that's fine with you?" Blood boiling, his temper is thinner than a knife. He doesn't know why he can't just walk away.

"Because fighting back's done you so many favors."

Hands clenching his ears set back, "What do you know?"

"You're right. What do I know?" They reiterate firm and cold, "I'm just like them after all." 

The _enderman_ scowls, picks up a block and cradles it. The point driven home like the hammer to the spike of a lobotomy.

"You're being an idiot." Dream smoothes over, anger trapped behind a barricade of grinning ivory, "You're being irrational- you're, you have to- you have to see that, you have to see that anything is better than this. You _know_ anything is better than this." 

_We deserve better._ He doesn't add, doesn't get the chance because they're snarling right in his face. 

"I don't care!" They yell, mouth a yawning purple, eyes flashing, cracking sounds like end stone crumbling under immense force. "It's not worth this. Nothing was worth this." 

"Do you-" They're almost hysterical voice cracking, "do you even care? Do you even care that these were people? Are you even capable of that?" 

" _We_ are people-" He affirms, eyes dark, " _I_ am a person." 

"Are you? I'd argue this-" They point their fingers at the ground, sardonic in tone, "this isn't something _people_ do" 

"I am doing what I have-" 

"Oh man--" hand sliding down their face, they give a shattered half-laugh, half-sigh, "you're never going to learn, are you? You can't win. You're never going to- there is never going to be an end to the conflict. You will never be anything more than _what_ you are." 

"Maybe... maybe I can't." He admits it like he's pulling teeth, one painful syllable at a time. It breaks something in him and he bleeds from the tongue, lets the reds paint his lips and his teeth as he confesses, "But if I can't, if there's no point, if there's- if you're just-" 

He shakes his head, and it's so hard, it's so damn difficult to find the words m but he has to, he has to, he has to. His life depends on it. "If none of it matters then I will burn every city, every nation, every _home_ to the ground and- and I mean who cares, right?" 

"Dream-"

"Aren't you happy? Isn't that what you always want from me? You want me to-" he breaks off with a laugh, shoulders heaving, "you want me to-"

His voice bends and snaps, hands over his mouth, trying to hold something back, hide something, pretend, too long spent behind a mask. Stillborn words slip through the gaps and he doesn't know if they're delusions anymore, "You want me to confess? _Fine._ "

"I wanted to do it. I wanted that- I wanted it and I didn't care-" he wheezes like he's been shot, collecting air on painful rattles,"I **don't** care… I don't give a fuck about anything."

"Good," they say and he flinches. 

He stares at the ground, hair flopped in his face, chest heaving. Wretched sounds caught in the back of his throat and he doesn't know what to do with his hands, his arms, his limbs, that hot itch of venom crawling under the skin that tugs at his lips and curls them back in jumping snarls.

He presses nails shaped like claws into his palms and buries himself with a single sentence. "I'll be glad to forget you."

"Come on, you don't mean that. Why would you wanna forget me?" They purr the words, hand ghosting against his cheek, moving to brush the hair out of his face. "I'm your only friend."

He looks up wide eyed.

No. _No._

All he sees is a respirator, black eyes, and a toxic burning green; a golden circlet and a red gem to seal the deal. 

The warden stares down at him, imposing and neutral. 

A flashing image, drifting into the territory of something that he doesn't immediately recognize, but the thumb brushing under his eye makes his stomach turn. 

Shaking gaze trapped on the warden's face, Dream steps out of reach, the drag of claws on his cheek left like an old haunting as he goes. Heels and back bumping hot obsidian, he looks over his shoulder and smacks the back of a fist against the stone. 

Again and again and again.

Trying to wake up. 

Red weeps from the split skin, jumping into toxic purples and he blinks, lips parted, whispering conjectures. 

The warden snaps fingers in his face like he's a dog. 

Dream stands to attention and the world threatens to spiral out, but he has to listen, has to stay awake, has to stay Pavlov's dog to the bell.

The warden's gaze is oppressive judgement, everything that makes him bristle and drag his nails through the grooves of obsidian at his back. It reduces him to something weak and irritating, a bug in the heel of the warden's shoe.

He slides into a hunch, shoulders drawn up, head angled to avoid staring the warden directly in the eye. Fingers brought up to spin a loose button on his jumpsuit like it's a substitute for a clock on the wall. 

The warden tilts his head, looking him up and down with a scrutiny that scrapes up the sides of his soul. A beat passes and the warden reaches up to tug that respirator from his mouth, letting it rest at his neck and the smile is all wrong.

It jumps and jitters, a white crescent glowing too bright in the cell. His cell. His smile. _Wrong-_

Dream claws it off the warden's face, hot blood sizzling where it splashes across the ground. 

Ducking out of the warden's retaliation, he scampers out of reach. Watching as the tall figure turns, slow and measured, wiping purple blood from cut lips bent in a frown. More boiling from between the lines cut though the top of the warden's cheek to the bottom of his jaw. 

It bleeds purple, turning the greens brown, red- he forgets the color, he forgets it's-

He doesn't care, he doesn't think, doesn't consider. He's only breath and blood and vindication. 

A thing born and bred off the idea of _survive_ , and he's never felt more like a frothing animal, a thing with power in its palms, caught on its fangs, eyes catching the light.

He matches each step the warden takes towards him, an unspoken law of conversation. He knows he should be dead right now, left counting the steps backwards, knowing he should be ten paces into lava, but it never comes and the warden catches up. 

He always does.

"You're perfect." The warden shoves him, a sardonic voice twisted into a thousand others. "A perfect, perfect little puppet. An easy scapegoat. Sowing chaos and destruction wherever you go." 

Again and again, he falls and each time the warden patiently waits for him to get back up, only to throw him down again. 

He gets up slower and slower each time. 

Until he is laughing at the vertigo, and he drives himself into a breathlessness that numbs everything. A few steps later his legs give out. 

The warden's haughty words crawl in his ears, "You'd bend the whole world at its knees just to demand it all go a little differently, wouldn't you?"

Dream chuckles, lungs aspirating on the answer. Biting his cheek, he holds back the cough that threatens to expel it and his eyes stay stuck on the doubled image of the warden's boots. He refuses to let it out even as his ribs seize. 

Laughing was always easier than trying to defend himself. He only accepts the accusation because it's expected of him. 

A fist folds in the front of his jumpsuit, wrenching him up to his feet and then some. Until he's up on his toes, scrabbling at a forearm to hold himself up and still laughter sloughs off his lips. 

Nose to nose, the warden's face flickers. Trading for enderman features and a wide jagged maw and then warped in a blink into that of a smiling mask, dots and curved lines popping like purple sparks overhead.

"Remember, this is your fault." 

They drop him on the final word and he spins into nothing. Fallen straight through the floor, he thinks he'd rather have his skull split open then go tumbling back down the rabbit hole. 

He doesn't have a choice. 

A chaotic dance sends him falling through the pages of book after book, spilt into a bleeding sky, dropping down like the viscous purple of crying obsidian to stain the parchment. Words flying by that he tries to catch but only ever holds on to the smiling faces, the scratchy impression of the letters. 

He hits the ground. 

Reality cracks and he finds himself walking down a narrow stone corridor. The steps make far more sense than the question of how he got there, and his hand brushes the wall, fingers dragged with a rasp behind him, blood he doesn't see left in their wake. 

_'Well, I've heard there was a special place,  
Where men could go and emancipate,  
The brutality and the tyranny of their rulers…'_

The humming notes resonate in the air and drift down the steps. He takes each one with a deliberate stride, eating up the space between him and the phantom tune. It dumps him out into a long corridor, illuminated only by the red spill of light at the end, pads of his feet sinking into a carpet of wool as he draws closer. 

Growing narrower and narrower, his breathing quickens and he wonders if it will crush him on all sides before he ever reaches the end. Every step, every touch, every drag of his soul down the cattle chute stains it crimson. 

He pauses at the threshold. A held breath, bathed half in light, half in dark. He considers entrenching himself in the shadows, safer, easier, more like home, but he knows the nightmare can't end until he takes that step. 

He steps inside the room and the singing stops. 

TNT rings the whole room, stacked and wired, bundle after bundle, crystals formed on the sweating sticks. Volatile and explosive and the single lantern on the ceiling makes the red of them dance like flames. Wax string lines run from the blast caps into holes in the wall, red stone dust peppered alongside it. The whole place wired to blow. 

He walks along the wall and becomes a slinking shadow. Gaze trapped on the ragged figure in a trench coat sat in the lonely wooden chair facing the wall. TNT stacked around the humble throne. 

His eyes track the man's line of sight, and for a long moment they both stare at a button on the wall. The innocuous thing surrounded by words etched into the stone. Verses once sung and now scratched from history.

The lantern swings with a creak, warping the shadows and the man drops his face into his hands. Fingers snaking up under a beanie to grab at curly hair. His shoulders shake and the broken laugh that spills out is something that will always be ingrained in Dream's skull.

"Wilbur?"

Wilbur lifts his head from his hands, eyes dark and dull behind round glasses. He looks a hundred nights deep into no sleep, a lifetime spent sitting there, staring at that button like he's never left this room. Like he's not allowed to.

"I had the perfect opportunity to blow everything up and finally end it, y'know?" Wilbur stands and Dream steps back into a lower stance prepared to defend himself, but the threat never comes. The ex-revolutionary simply moves to stand in front of that button in the wall. 

Words biting and sharp, Wilbur keeps stringing them along, "I had _the_ perfect opportunity to just blow up everything and end it and just- and just completely save everyone from the existence of tyranny."

He knows these old words are never meant for him. 

He knows he fills the space of the intruder, that thing that occupies the wrong role and is forced to listen, forced to acknowledge and find reason. The wrong manifestation of a corrupted memory. But the words are a tired sentiment he often finds himself agreeing with. 

"And I can just… I can still press it. I can literally just press it, it's right there." Wilbur hunches against the wall, teeth flashing, fist hovering over the button. "It's still there." 

Wilbur's voice shatters and he drops his hand, shoving it in his pocket as he draws air into his lungs on a long sigh. 

"I just- I just wanna fuckin'... I just want to fuckin' end it, man. I just want it to end." 

He thinks he's never agreed with Wilbur more. 

Eyes cast somewhere near the soles of dirty boots, he stands and waits for the proverbial clock hand to wind the rest of the way through its cycle. Waits for it to tick and tock straight to the end, finish with its cruel pantomime. 

It doesn't come no matter how hard he drives his nails into his palms, bites his tongue and shuts his eyes.

He soon finds himself sitting on the ground. Back pressed into stacks of explosives, head hung, eyes distant and he props a wrist up on his knee and flexes his fingers like a new fixation. Staring unfocused, waiting for the room to implode. At least then it'd be over. 

"Don't want to tell the rest then? You can't expect me to do all the leg work."

His brow bends at Wilbur's accusation, an irritation that has his eyes narrowing and his temple jumping with the clench of his jaw.

There's a _tsking_ sigh, footsteps, and then he's tilting his head back to stare lazily up at Wilbur's despondent face. 

"Come on, _Dream_ , you're gonna tell me you already forget this one?" Wilbur asks honey smooth. "I thought it was your favorite. It's all about you, after all."

Wilbur leans down and Dream glares up into his face, dragging his heels closer to himself as the ex-revolutionary presses in too close. All with the air of someone peering down at something once dangerous and wondering how it got that feeble. 

Tilting his head with the twist of a tired smile, Wilbur grabs his chin, fingers driving into the bones of his jaw, straining his neck as he tugs him forward. 

He knows he just has to scratch and claw and bite. He knows, it's right there screaming for blood. Screaming at the edge of his mind, at the roots of his teeth, burning and baying, but the harsh reality is that he deserves it- he deserves it because he was stupid enough to let himself be trapped in the first place. 

"That's how it goes, right? You go too far, you stop being useful, stop being that mediator, the _hero_. The impartial little do-gooder and they'll muzzle you. They'll rip out those teeth one by one." 

A thumb pushes his lips up and he tries to recoil. An icy shock running down his spine at the slide of skin over his gums, across his teeth and his eyes roll with panic, ankles kicking and scraping the ground when a nail tries to pry his jaws apart by the seam. 

He's left with the all consuming powerlessness that comes with being manhandled, of being too weak to stop it. Left to shake and draw faster breaths as he chokes on air like he chokes on his pride. An unbidden hotness pricking at the corner of his eyes.

There's almost a glimmer of defiance in the fact that he manages to keep his mouth shut. It's dashed against the rocks of inevitably when a boot crushes the bones in his tail and he pitches forward with a shout.

He always hated the damn thing, but he hates the sensation of fingers in his mouth even more. All ash, and soot, and the spice of black powder. 

Growling around them, he crunches down on the intrusion, chokes on the blood that bursts across his tongue, spilt down his chin. And it does nothing.

It does nothing to stop the old familiar tune of fingers grabbing a canine and twisting it straight out of his jaw. The wet popping crunch echoing horridly in his skull, the electric shock shooting through every nerve. 

He gargles some pathetic sound, ignored as he shoves and kicks, and it's always futile. Always the same dream, the same nightmare, the same words-

"They'll trim those fangs and discard you, trap you there in that cage. Something pretty and purposeful, all faux shiny and new. They'll make you weak, right?" Wilbur muses, turning the bloody tooth in the lantern light before letting it drop. 

The next canine follows with the same brevity.

"And sure, you're smart. Of course you'll find brand new ways to mess with all the things that manage to slip their way through the bars." 

The sound of the second tooth pinging against the ground is somehow so much louder than the third.

"But I reckon that's not enough, it's never enough. You go to so much fucking trouble, and-" Wilbur's voice cracks, almost hysterical. "And why? For what? You _let_ yourself be used again, and again, and again."

By the fourth and final canine, he seizes. 

"And then you went scrambling for power, grasping at control and-" Wilbur cuts off with a laugh, chock full of a mirthful contrite, "-and oh, you failed brilliantly at that, too."

With hitched breath lobbed from his lungs, he barks out pathetic sounds at the end of each punched one. A second later he ends up like a fish on a line, dragged back to his feet by fingers hooked in the roof of his mouth and then discarded.

"You cared- no, you _care_ too much, Dream." Wilbur concludes, wiping a bloodied hand off on his coat. 

It's only a small mercy that Wilbur let's him go. Left to hunch in on himself, half collapsed against the stacks of TNT. A forearm braced against the wired explosives, other hand shaking, slapped over his lips, over bubbled nonsensical phrases in reply to the damning words. Those sounds and syllables that accuse them _both_.

Curving fingers and nails into his own cheeks, he spits out empty vitriol through the hollow sting of missing teeth. 

All wide eyed and open mouthed, left panting into the cup of a hand when his voice holds no weight. It's all just thick blood mixing with spit to spill into a rotting palm and trail down his arm. Drops slapping the floor with an obscene loudness.

Wilbur looks on with something half glare and half dread. A small crack glints at the edge of his glasses, the lense smudged with blood where he'd pushed them back up his nose. 

He matches Wilbur's stare. And for a second, even among the notes of violence, the sharp sting of wounded ego and malformed pride, they share the same blood on their hands. A begrudging understanding approached from two different sides. A coin tossed into the air and slapped on a palm, and then the back of a wrist. Never quite a heads or a tails depending on where the story ends. 

"You know, you deserve every second of it." 

The condemnation is stale and he thinks it's a phrase meant more for the warden's mouth. Or maybe it's just another thing he's forgetting. 

The hollow sound of snapping bones and twisted flesh sings in his ear. That haunting sound without a source and he shakes his head, tongue moving to push syllabes out in reply, some sort of plea to stop. It's always the same things, the same cycle, over and over and-

He steps back and his foot meets nothing. 

Fallen through like it's just a canvas painting, some illogical illusion, he grabs onto the edge before he can go tumbling down; refusing the fate. He can't wrap his head around the idea that perhaps he's been standing atop of that winding tower this entire time, blinded to the buffeting wind, the whip of sparks and embers, the kaleidoscope stretch of the sky. All of it offset by a thousand clock faces and an obsidian lattice. 

Now that he hangs from it, gaze cast to the ground. He thinks it's familiar, from the crater among the ruins of a lonely fort to the burnt out remains of a tent, to that broken nether portal. It echoes with suicidal ideations and a decision not to jump.

Clinging to the ledge, he tries to scramble up, pads of his feet working uselessly, claws scraping the stone. He slips down an inch for every bit of ground that he gains.

 _Please, please, please-_

His arms shake with the effort to claw himself back up. He sees the toxic orange fabric of a jumpsuit, the purple of netherite cuffs on his wrists, and his heart screams in his chest, pounding so fast it thumps behind his sternum with bruising thuds. The tower spins into slick obsidian and he starts to slip. 

_Please-_

And the cycle repeats itself. 

He looks up and sees Wilbur standing over him, staring down at him with an empty expression.

"Tell me, was it worth it? Did you save them?"

He struggles, trying to reach higher, get his hands close enough to grab at those boots and then leverage himself the rest of the way up before he can be kicked off. Air whistles through his clenched teeth, spit and blood spilt from sore gums. 

He doesn't have an answer.  
No answer is good enough.

Nothing can truly summarize why, nothing can even begin to scrape the surface of a long history spent in quarters and halves, time divided between chaos and peace. Memory half gone, the rest crumbling into static, and he feels it slipping even now. Turning Wilbur's face into a thick mask of scattering particles, a tilting smile that clicks and spins like a clock's hands.

He lets himself sag against the side of the tower, forehead resting against the stone. Exhausted. It's just the same, it's always the same- it's-

He opens his mouth, conjuring up words only to kill them. Swallowing them back down into the poisoned pit of his belly.

"No, no- tell me, what'd you have to say? Was it worth it to come back here, to press that button- did you save them?" Wilbur crouches down, shifting into a thousand different forms and faces, but it's always himself at the end.

He _doesn't_ have an answer.  
_No_ answer is good enough. 

And it's always the same, it's always the same, it's always-

Both hands gripping the ledge, trying to keep himself afloat in the widening pull of gravity, the dizzy wind and the crumbling sky; it's always the same.

Lava spills from holes ripped in the sky, igniting the air to unleash the sun in long dripping pillars that tumble down to flood the land. The world crumbles, heats up, and starts to die. And he clings to it, afraid of what happens if he let's it go. 

Wilbur grabs his jaw again and he tosses his head to throw him off, twisting and squirming from hands that smear purple, red, black blood into his skin, into his fur, into the scales and the scars and every twisted up portion of himself.

Into that chewed up spit out raw nerve that still sings with the pain of pulled teeth.

It's the same. It's always the same. Over and over and over. It's always the same-  
It's just the same- it's-

Those same fingers had already pulled his eye teeth from their sockets, the gums bled dry, tongue heavy with the iron tang- what more could they want?

He pretends like he doesn't give up, a learned helplessness driving him to let his jaw part and he knows, he knows, he knows-

A stick of dynamite is shoved lengthwise between his teeth, molars forced shut on it until he tastes the sweet sand beneath the wax paper and it's a cruel sort of symbolism. 

Like a dog holding a stick between its teeth, he can't bring himself to spit it out. He clenches his eyes shut and bites harder, knows it should explode under the kinetic force, the moisture, all of it- knows it should grant him a death like the fitters of his own violence. 

Dynamite, TNT, blackpowder. It didn't matter, It was all the same, all the same goal, the same flash, the same smell, the same-

The metal clink and winding click of a lighter rings out. 

A hand fisted in the collar of his jumpsuit drags him up, like somehow he weighs nothing, _is_ nothing, and he opens his eyes only to stare straight into Wilbur's own.

"Now… you get back to that box." The ex-revolutionary bites the words out, lighting the dynamite's wick, the flame flickering in the dark catch of his pupils. 

Dream's eyes widen, the sound of the burning wick buzzing like a thousand wasps in his ears as he clutches Wilbur's forearm, reaches for that trench coat, kicks and twists and tries so damn hard to drag the man off the precipice with him.

It does nothing.

Wilbur throws him from the tower and he should've known.

He always falls alone. 

A thousand hands catch him and pull him down.  
Morphing into red vines that choke him and his eyes water, his vision bleeds and he struggles against the relentless tug, the crowding obsessive haze swirling in his mind. Voices whispered like backwards hisses in his ears. 

The crimson draws him in, dragging him deeper and deeper, hatching phrases in his ears, asking him what he wants, what he craves, spilling the allure of a better world across his mind. The whispering red never realizes he's the bomb until the wick burns down to the end and it's far too late to spit him back out.

The world goes white. 

And he finds himself struggling underwater, finally awake, aware, _alive_ or so he thinks, or so he has to believe-

Crawling up like a waterlogged rat on to the boardwalk, the community house greets him like an old friend and he collapses onto his back at the sight of it. There's a laughing sense of relief at the humble sight of the bricks and the planters.

Smile cast to the sky, he throws an arm over his eyes and just breathes. Ensconcing himself in the fresh air, the sting of chilly wind against damp skin, the water leaving behind a lingering burn that's easy to ignore. Things that he shouldn't even miss, but somehow it feels like embracing an old friend. 

He pretends the taste of ash in his mouth doesn't exist.

"It's a bit cold to be taking a swim isn't it?"

He looks towards the aloof voice and something bright bursts in his chest.

"It's- it's not _that_ cold. It's like just below lukewarm at best. Perfect for swimming, honestly." There's a slight chatter to his words, a natural sarcasm to them that tastes almost stale. He doesn't care that his words contradict his numb fingers, he feels warm, feels more than alive as he stares up at George and knows he must look ridiculous.

"You totally fell off the boardwalk, again? Didn't you?"

Sitting up he pushes wet hair out of his face ~~too human~~ and smiles sarcastically up at an offered hand, "What? What- no, I didn't that's-"

George looks unimpressed.

"I did not fall off the boardwalk. I mean we haven't put the railings up, but it's not like- you can't just _fall_ off unless you're- I dunno fishing too close to the edge or- or something-" jumping around for a defense he lets George pull him up to his feet, "what kind of idiot does that?"

"You, apparently." George rolls his eyes with a huff, cutting the air with a little smile. "Come on then, let's get you some dry clothes, maybe some brain cells while we're at it." 

He chuckles but doesn't have the energy for anything else. Doesn't care to add anything else, because each second, each word, each smile feels like he's digging deep into a rotting past. Living on borrowed time. 

And perhaps George thinks it's all a bit odd because he pushes those sunglasses to the top of his head and looks like he wants to ask something. 

They both settle for changing the subject. Easier words found in more familiar phrases. Sapnap joins in when they enter the community house, such a familiar tune, filling the home with its warm music. 

It just makes sense, all of it. Even Bad wrapping the scrapes and cuts on his hands, the few on his face, never asking how he got them, only caring to see each one cleaned and covered. He spends a long moment staring down at wrapped knuckles, flexing his fingers and wondering why it feels like he's been slamming his fists into a wall.

He spends a whole minute staring and wondering why they haven't healed. Blood staining the white bandages pink. 

When they grow concerned he tries his best to smile, to laugh, to throw quips around, but it feels like he's an imposter. Smile never reaching his eyes, the world always a bit dull, shaped a bit wrong. Still, it's home, even if he feels wrong. 

When the sun sinks low, they all sit around the communal table. Partaking in the same humble feast served every night to anyone who wanders through the door, stories exchanged under the lamp light.

He feels like he's drifting in and out, the lanterns chasing the shadows around the table, an orange afterglow that ruminates like lava. Eyes tracing the backs of his hands, he taps his fingers on the table and feels nothing but a stiff caricature of the sensation. 

He looks down the table, all the faces unfocused before he blinks and rights the image. Callahan stares back at him, head tilted, signing something he doesn't quite catch except for the last two words-

_Wake up._

The door swings open, creaking loud on its hinges, stealing his attention. 

He has no goddamn idea what Callahan means until he sees the warden standing there.

"Sorry I'm late." Sam kicks the door shut, arms full of sticks he drops by the door. "Got caught up dealing with the bamboo garden. It looked like some of the new shoots were getting heart rot so I had to clear 'em out." 

"Oh-" Bad interrupts himself with a sip from a glass, "we could've helped you. You could've just called us--" 

"Nah, it's all good now. Just gotta make sure a creeper doesn't blow it up, again."

"I keep telling you we could always just get some cats." George chimes in.

"Oh no- _no._ " Sam shakes his head with a laugh, "that's not gonna happen. Those things seriously freak me out."

"You're scared of 'em?" Sapnap leans back in his chair, arms crossed. "Huh, thought you were half-human."

"I'm also half-creeper." Sam emphasizes, waving a hand as he sheds his coat and hangs it on the back of an empty chair, "and I'm more of a dog person anyways."

Dream tracks Sam's steps like his life depends on it. 

~~The warden~~ sits across from him, scooping up a baked potato only to drop it with a hiss when it burns his fingers, thumb caught between his lips to stymie the pain. Bad calls a late warning of _'Careful, they're still hot!'_ down the table. 

~~The warden~~ Sam laughs, and more comments fly around the table, the cheer of food and drink mixed with the quiet comfort of warmth from the cold. 

He's so human it hurts. Even with all the mob features, even with the same black eyes, the same voice. Even _without_ that respirator mask, without that circlet, without the dark circles and the tired, empty expression. It's too strange to see him without a netherite sword at his hip, the burden of keeper weighing on his shoulders.

"So-" Sam starts, "I noticed the railings are still half done. I can finish 'em up tomorrow if you want me to."

"Nah it's fine, we'll get 'em finished. Gotta keep Dream from trying to swim with the fishes after all-" Sapnap explains with a wave of his hand.

The ~~warden's~~ scrutiny turns on him now.

"You fell in? _Again_?" Sam's voice is a mixed bag of concerned and amused.

He ducks his head on forced instinct mumbling a flat, _I'm fine._

Someone nudges his side and he leans away, lips thin and eyes glazed over.

"To be fair, last time he was climbing the planters trying to save a bird's nest." George defends him, covering for his uncharacteristic silence, "I told him he should've just built a scaffolding instead of climbing straight up like a dumbass, but- uh, you were worried it was gonna blow off, right?"

George looks over, but Dream keeps his eyes down and hardly understands who he is supposed to be. 

He can barely manage a smile at the anecdote, let alone an answer. Staring, and staring, and staring, and his fingers spin a wooden bowl like it's a clock, the bits of vegetable and meat floating in the stew serve as the numbers.

Words drift in and out of his ears and his vision threatens to double, and then triple and he can't stop his lips from moving.

"This isn't real."

"What're you-" Sam's eyes drift to the bandages, concerned, "are you- are you sure you're alright? You're acting a bit weird." 

It's a loaded question. 

Sam looks to the others for an answer, and in some significant way he seems genuinely worried, Dream misses it when he pushes away from the table. 

He's moving for the door with monomaniacal intent, almost frantic, steps jagged with a wobbling gait, he has to try the handle, he has to- 

He has to make sure it's not locked. 

It opens and he presses his forehead into the cool wood of the frame. His fingers twisted around the handle, all shaking breaths and adrenaline. 

He sees only a tiny sliver of the world when he looks out into the night. Torches illuminating the boardwalk and the edge of the forest, leaving a glowing path straight to the community house's front door. And it is everything- _everything_ he's fought so hard for. 

But looking back over his shoulder, that cozy scene turns empty, grown cold and sour with the table overturned, chairs half broken and forgotten. Twisted by time and neglect.

The only person left is the warden. Standing expectant among the quiet remains, waiting for him to run or to stay.

He considers it, remembers every time he tried to run and the paltry rewards it earned him. After a moment, eyes glued to the outside world, he shuts the door and accepts his fate.

\--

He startles awake to the sight of dripping lava, hot obsidian against his cheek and his ribs as he grabs the sides of his head and curls in. Staring at the molten rock until it grows into a blur of orange that keeps him endlessly hypnotized. 

Alone in that empty cell he isn't sure if he prefers this or the nightmare. He isn't sure of anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ender Translation in order:  
> Play it.  
> It's yours. Don't you remember?  
> Does it matter? You can't say no.
> 
> I just want to make clear that _everything_ in the nightmare portion of this exists in Dream's mind- it's not real- it's not happening- it's all his thoughts, his opinions, his mixed up memories, his own catastrophizing of the past, the future and the present- all mixed in with the people he knows. It's unreliable, so the way characters are portrayed doesn't reflect reality. Just wanted to remind everyone of that for any confusion for all the wild shit that happened and also so the Wilbur Soot stans and stuff don't get angry at me for his characterization, y'all are valid- every sentence of this was intentional 😳
> 
> I will finally get to some more plot based stuff and Warden Sam talking to Dream next chapter yeehaw :')
> 
> Edit: I also realized I never gave a time for how long updates for these chapters will take- I'm slower to write so updates can be anything from two weeks to even a whole month. Or much less time- it really just depends honestly :')


	8. Lateralus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "-Trust in me and fall as well.  
> I will find a center in you,  
> I will chew it up and leave,  
> Trust me.  
> Trust me.  
> Trust me.  
> Trust me.  
>  **Trust me.** "
> 
> - _Sober_ , Tool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally seriously throwing canon out the window in this lets gooo 😤  
> Still gonna use it for ideas but I've got different plans so my deepest apologies canon our beloved 😔
> 
> For this I really took that one line from the streams about Ranboo acting virtually the same as he normally does whenever he visited the prison and ran with it. Dude really said "actually I don't want to remember this one" and just didn't. I also just think the idea of him being almost entirely himself in the Enderwalk state is neat. ✌️😔
> 
> Trigger Warnings: Derealization, Depersonalization, implied prolonged non-consensual drug use, coercion, the usual distressing content, the usual unreliable narrator

He's standing at the lectern, staring down at a book and not comprehending the movement of his own hands as they write something again and again.

The scratch of the pen, the drag of the nib on the paper, dark words bloom across the parchment. 

Something's wrong. He thinks passingly that there always is, but this feeling is much stronger. Prescribed to every nerve and every bone, he angles his head and casts his eyes to the corner. Peering at the clock on the wall, the thing ticks and ticks and-- 

"Dream?" 

Wiping smudges of ink off on his jumpsuit he turns to face the visitor. 

Not the guards, not the Warden, no it's the first time in a while he's looking at another person standing opposite of him ~~right?~~. And it's too surreal. He can't quite contend with the relief that comes when he recognizes those red and green eyes in the barest sense.

It's an echo of the past, of fever dreams and memories colliding to form half finished puzzles, ink sloshed across them to fill in the gaps in all the wrong ways. An angry river rising as he steps away from the drying ink of a half filled book and faces the present, hands clasped behind his back in a parade stance.

"Hello." He says it with a tilt of his head, greeting soft and reserved.

The kid mimics the tilt, mismatched eyes never quite settling on his face, claws clutched around a book in a tirelessly nervous grip. 

"This is a bit weird, considering we've never actually spoken before," The kid speaks in ender, all trailing and awkward, "uh, well-" 

"What happened to your eye?" He doesn't know why he interrupts, but the red seems important, the white splitting half the ender's face is _odd_. ~~Or was it enderman? He can't quite recall and the difference was always so flimsy and thin~~ Regardless he's half, he thinks, something halved- and the thought is loose and winding, hard to grasp like everything these days.

The ender startles, "W-what?" 

"Your eye." He reiterates, "you're not..." 

He trails off, tongue thick with questions but the spark to ignite them never comes. The words shrivel and die. 

"My-" The ender gestures to his own face, "It's always been like this, I mean since I can remember at least I- what are you- No, _no_. You're just trying to confuse me." 

The strength behind the words is almost amusing, the ender swapping between a shaking sort of nervousness to a stern confrontation. It almost leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. 

The ender holds that book out to him, steel-faced and brave, voice shaking more than his hands do, "I need you to tell me if you changed anything in here."

He eyes the book, finally spotting a name beneath the blocky title of _Do Not Read #2_. "… and if I don't?"

"You-" _Ranboo_ cuts himself off with a shaky breath, "you're going to tell me. You've got nothing else to do in here, you have nothing left to dangle over everyone's heads-"

His lips bend into a frown. _Since when did the kid grow a spine?_

Ranboo stares him down, eyes actually locked on his own for once- not just caught on his brows or his nose. Not stuck on a mask that used to be there- no, Ranboo meets his gaze and matches it. 

"You're going to tell me if you're the one who blew up the community house." 

He smirks, breaking eye contact with a shrug and a slurred, "Fair enough."

He grabs the book and pretends like he knows what he's looking for. Admitting what he can't recall, what he doesn't know about this kid, and his book, and his 'community house' is a creeping fear of weakness that spreads like ice inching across the side of his skull. Something cracked and peeling back, slow and daunting, he's afraid it'll catch up to his teeth and tongue.

Fumbling through the pages, he angles away and paces with a calm gait if only to hide the way his fingers clumsily catch the pages. Palms shaking as he smooths them over flimsy lines of ink.

The first thing he notices is how it starts neat and gets messier, more disjointed.

It reminds him of the books he still has in the chest. 

So much like those pages filled with all the things he can never seem to remember. Of pigs and favors owed, of scribbling shapes in empty margins and tall shapes with open maws. Eyes that he scratches lines through to turn into stars and the gnarled shape of a dragon, of red and green and hushed memories like the haunted corridors of a winding maze that only ever grows more confusing. 

It reminds him of himself in some significant way until he gets to a few pages dedicated only to words scored so deep they punch holes through the backs of the paper.

`I DONT WANT TO REMEMBER I DONT WANT TO REMEMBER I DONT WANT TO REMEMBER I DONT WANT TO REMEMBER I DONT WANT TO REMEMBER I DONT WANT TO REMEMBER I DONT WANT TO REMEMBER I DONT WANT-`

It shakes and shudders, the sounds of explosions sounding off alongside the elder guardians' droning chime.

The world quiets when he frantically turns until the words finally disappear. And then it's just random phrases and actions, a day to day narrative marked by snippets of dialogue jotted down without any real context. All little mementos used to sum up the short stretch of a life lived like an impressionist painting. 

He flips back to the start, driven by some instinct- something he has to see, has to confirm and he doesn't even understand when his eyes stare down at the page.

`You blew up the community house :)`

He traces the smiley face with a thumb. Something prickles at the base of his neck and he hears the faint trace of a familiar tune, it dies when he looks up at Ranboo. 

"You wrote that you did it."

"I know, but that's not- I know I didn't-"

"You had _the_ disc." He reads it outloud, slow enough for it to linger in the air. Damnation.

"I did, I did have it. But that's not-"

"Then you _did_ all those things." 

"Yes, I mean- no. No, that's not the- you told everyone that _you_ destroyed the community house." Ranboo gestures wildly, "unless you were covering for me, in which case I want to know why. Why me?" 

Bristling he clutches the book and feels like he's been backed into the world's smallest corner, unable to recall something that he's been forced to give up, something stripped from a tight grip, something that he should never have fucking lost. He feels a tremor claw its way up his arms, creeping up and down his spine, a horrific sense of dread. 

Lip curled, chin down he bites back with all that he _truly_ knows, "How- how could I have done anything? I've been stuck in here--" 

"No, you're not going to do that." Ranboo's voice breaks on a brittle laugh, "Before this, before the prison. You said- you told everyone you did it. You looked me in the eyes when they dragged you away- I want to know what that means- I want to know why I-"

Ranboo hunches in on himself, breaths impossibly shaky as he runs both hands through hair that's more fur than anything, "I want to know why I had the TNT-" Ranboo starts, choking down shaky breaths, "Why did I have the disc? Why do I hear-"

"You seem upset."

Ranboo laughs, broken and disparate. "You think?" 

"Listen," He sighs, eyes sweeping over Ranboo's hunched form, "You… I'm pretty sure you won't find your answers here." 

"What makes you think that?" Ranboo sounds genuinely distressed.

"I'm not the person you're looking for." He affirms, words feeling distant like he's talking in his sleep. But he's sure of them, he has to be.

"What? What do you- what does that even mean?" 

Instead of answering, he flips to the end of the book, eyes scanning the lines. Conjuring up some sort of finished puzzle with the half charred pieces and thinking he's on to something even though it's a race he's always destined to lose. 

He silently reads over the lines, reminds himself of them, all of it shaking from common into ender and back again. 

`Dream lied. He never brought up the fact that I had the disks. He never brought up the fact that I may have helped blow up the community house.`

"Dream-" Ranboo stresses, stepping forward, "what does that mean?" 

It's that name again, that damn name and the pressure in his skull builds into a dull ache and his mouth feels like it's stuffed with cotton when he finally replies. 

"You wrote…" He slams the book closed, staring at the cover, "you wrote _if Dream's a bad guy and I've done the same things as Dream. Am I the bad guy?_ "

"...I… I did. But-" 

He looks up at Ranboo, pinning him with a glare, "So, you helped Dream do all those things."

Ranboo startles, eyes widening a fraction before they narrow and he dips his head with a grimace.

"Why are you referring to yourself in the third person? Have you- have you gone insane in here?" Ranboo asks, voice cold and dipped in something bitter and affronted. 

He offers a smile in defense, but he can't muster words. Despite tasting blood and hearing a shattering screech, he collects the pieces of himself into the pinnacle of calm and collected. 

He sets Ranboo's memory book on the lectern and moves to grip the edge of the water basin, trying to keep his shoulders from jumping too high with every fast breath. 

Nausea roiling behind the barricade of his teeth he tries to recall where he is, who he is, what he is, and somehow each answer is another nightmare. 

He watches the black and white figure creep into his peripherals as he stares down into the basin, his own reflection spilling, overflowing, never settling and he waits and waits- he waits for it to smooth out and make sense. 

It doesn't. Not really, not into anything concrete. It's just some shape of black and white, two blurs of red and green, the golden echoes of a crown to top it off. He looks towards Ranboo, offering a small shrug and a thin smile.

"It's just a- a little joke. It gets boring in here... " He trails off with an empty chuckle, letting the lie drip down into the water below.

Ranboo stays silent, only picking up his book from the lectern and stowing it back in his inventory with a conflicted expression. Suddenly scrutinizing him, mismatched eyes scrape up the shell of his soul with a contemplation and a palpable sort of pity. 

Like he's something brittle and breaking, not worth the power he knows himself to be capable of. 

It makes him bristle, lip curled back just enough to barely flash his teeth as he raises his chin and stares straight at the wall. 

He straightens his spine and clasps his hands behind his back, driving sharp claws into scarred palms so deep they draw blood. The bite of pain isn't enough to get the colors right, all the purples still off, the blacks different, everything dull and lacking contrast. 

He can feel Ranboo stare and so he rocks back on his heels and switches his gaze to the clock on the wall. Watching it spin and spin in the stretch of silence. 

Something isn't right, it keeps stuttering, moving one tick to the right and then jumping back to the left. 

He contemplates asking Ranboo if he notices, but something tells him to hold the thought and let other words drip out.

"Listen." He starts, turning to look Ranboo in the eyes, and feeling as if he's staring at himself. "Maybe you just- maybe you don't remember. You must've done all those things if you're this upset."

"But I wouldn't- I _wouldn't_ do those things," Ranboo protests, his tail sweeping in an agitated line. "I would have no reason to do those things unless-"

"Maybe, but you're… you're guilty right." He cuts him off, voice clinical. "Why feel guilty for something you didn't do? Why try to pin it on someone else?" 

He punctuates each word by stepping in a slow circle around Ranboo, watching as the kid turns to keep him in sight. 

"I mean-" He stops, arms crossed and head tilted, "it seems pretty useless to me unless you did do it and you just don't want to remember." 

He's only being honest, it's not his fault Ranboo can't accept the truth.

"No, you're-" Ranboo shakes his head, stepping back, "you're just trying to confuse me. You must know- you know I hear your voice, you know I catastrophize things- you're just trying to twist it all in my head."

He looks on in silence as Ranboo throws down his final defense, airing out every claim to his innocence. 

Ranboo puts a hand to his chest, voice strained, "You're trying to make me a traitor." 

Something about it makes him frustrated, confused, he thinks he's supposed to have a better grasp on this conversation, a better understanding of where it started and where it's leading, but it's all muddied- it's always different. Tracks carved into sand only to shift and disappear in a moment.

He can hear the harsh scrape of Ranboo's breathing. Can practically feel the distress radiating off the kid with every second that passes and all he offers in exchange is a leveled stare.

When the silence grows too long, he dips his chin and narrows his eyes. Every thought swirling around his head feels like a rubber band pulled until it might snap, gums prickling and skin static at the anticipation, at the threat. He thinks back on the book. Thinks back on the kid panicking and thinks and thinks and thinks-

Something whispers against his ears and he repeats the exact words with all the confidence of a judge delivering a sentencing. "Doomed are those who try to run, for it always catches up eventually."

The words linger, a delay between them hitting Ranboo like a slap to the face because the kid stumbles back, muttering protests, knees crumpling a moment before he catches himself on shaking palms. When Ranboo claws his way off the ground he keeps skittering back until he's pressed into a corner, covering his head with his arms like the ceiling is going to cave in. 

Some one sided conversation carried out in notes that hitch on near sobs, hysterical back and forths and he wonders curiously what those wide eyes see, pupils constricted to pinpricks as they bounce around the room and never settle. 

He watches Ranboo break apart and wonders if he'd looked the same.

The kid shakes and mutters something, curling in on himself as something gnaws at him, eats up his insides and spits them back out, the black of his skin eating up the whites, purples flashing in his eyes.

He stares at Ranboo breaking apart on the obsidian floor and he doesn't blink or flinch. He feels nothing more than a subtle irritation, like looking into an open flame for too long. Unable to tear his eyes away even as the world starts to blur and the stuttering tick of the clock grows into a crescendo. 

Soon enough all that remains is the dark blur of colors and relative silence.

...

"Dream." 

Something shakes him. 

He blinks and the world is sideways, brow pinched he fans his fingers out across the ground. Slow and delicate, like the obsidian might break under them, he drags his palm a few inches and it takes him longer than it should to realize he's laying down. 

The name lingers in his ears and it takes him a few shaky inhales to recognize it's always been his. 

Something kicks his shoulder again, the world wobbling violently with the jarring movement. He doesn't even blink at the sting of pain, he just stares and stares, and remains in a level of catatonia that turns him into something as dead as the obsidian. 

It's not real. 

The hands that always shove and hit him aren't real. The boot kicking him in the shoulders is no different. It's just a product of paranoia; that's all.

He scrunches his brow, casts his gaze to where Ranboo had been and wonders where he's gone. 

There's a sigh, loud and exasperated from up above. He shuts his eyes and knows it's not real, even if it rings louder than sound, it's nothing, it's always nothing- 

There comes the shuffle of soles on obsidian, the thud of footsteps, all of it too hard to ignore and on the animal impulse to watch danger coming he opens his eyes only to see the shape of boots take up his vision. 

He turns his head just enough to glare up at the fresh hallucination of the warden-

A boot connects with his stomach.

 _Not a hallucination_ , he thinks bitterly as he wheezes, gums and teeth bared against the obsidian as he wraps arms around his middle and rolls on to his front. Breath turned to ragged coughs against the stone.

"Sit up." 

He must not do it fast enough because the warden grabs him by the back of the collar and hoists him up. Like some stubborn cat he flails his limbs for a second, swinging and hissing before he's dropped unceremoniously back on the ground.

Hunched forward, arms wrapped around his middle he feels his lips curl into a snarl, all glares and venom aimed somewhere around the warden's shins. Every part of him agitated at the sheer loudness of another thing actually taking up the same space as him.

The warden crouches down, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in the middle. Cold black eyes greet him when he finally looks up. 

Dream takes in the familiar form and everything that's changed. All that doesn't line up alongside the warden's constant glare, all that doesn't quite align itself with the unforgettable shape of disappointment. 

His eyes get caught on the fresh scars wrapped around the warden's forearms, the marks standing out angry and gnarled like flesh had been ripped off with teeth. A laugh bubbles up that he swallows down, some drunkenly amused feeling swimming in the corroded edges of his brain. He thinks it's amusing that they match. 

"When did Ranboo leave?" He asks, curious about how much time he'd lost.

"Ranboo?" The warden starts, brow bent, "Dream, no one's visited since Quackity." 

"N-no. No, he was just… he was-" His stomach turns and he looks around, determined to prove the warden wrong. He has to be wrong. 

"Don't change the subject." Fingers grab his chin and wrench his attention back, "You know I'm disappointed with you. I thought we had an understanding." 

He hears the words, feels the touch scorch his skin but it's hard to comprehend, eyes rolling like a rabbit's he scours the cell. And of course there's no clock, there's no lectern, there's no chest, the cell has been empty for days- or weeks, or months. He prays it's not the latter. 

Scratchy notes of recent memories stay buried under something too oppressive to shake off even when he tries. That constant poisoned feeling at the base of his skull, echoing to his jaw and up behind his ears until it crowds the space behind his eyes. 

He tries to recall the last thing, the easiest thing, tries to remember just one coherent detail, but all he manifests is the taste and smell of blood. A quaking chill to his own limbs. 

"You attacked Quackity," The warden explains, letting go of his chin. 

He ducks his head immediately, cutting eye contact instantly in favor of looking somewhere past the warden's knee, unable to handle the direct scrutiny. He can hardly handle the irrational thought that the warden has wormed his way so deep into his brain that he can hear his thoughts.

Because the way the warden says it, the way he lets him absorb the three words and mull them over is reminiscent of something less annoyed and more _expectant_. 

As if he- 

He has to know. **He has to know.**

Dream chances a glance back towards the warden, keeping it to something out of the corner of his eyes, all sharp edges and distrust. He never looks at him full on, occupied by the thought something stalks just out of sight, that cyclical thought that brings him back to the same spiraling grasp on reality. 

He remembers seeing red, the sound of crunching bone and giving skin, the jar of fists. 

"I guess I did," He admits, slow and measured.

The warden looks unimpressed.

And it's odd, he knows it's odd- the way that his pulse whispers in his ears like the drone of distant voices, the way his breath loops on repeat, the way his ribs rise and fall and he finds it hard to remember what it's like to be alive. It's strange and twisted, warped by an understanding that the present for him is fragile. 

It's the most real that everything has been and yet he spends it staring half at obsidian, half at an impassive face. Sitting on the ground, chin tucked low like an obedient dog, no real desire to see the experience curbed into any sort of violence, he thinks that's perhaps the strangest thing of all. 

Lips tugging up, Dream aims a shaky grin at the warden. "So... you've come to beat me then?"

"No. That would be counterproductive at this point."

He laughs, a raspy thing that nearly ends in a cough, "Well- when the hell did that change?" 

The warden doesn't answer. 

No, he just stares, confliction bending the warden's face for just a split second before he composes himself with a tired breath.

"Listen, you're already being punished for stepping out of line. I'm here because you haven't been eating." 

Dream's shoulders inch up closer to his ears, proverbial hackles raised, "I have." 

"Do you really want to lie to me right now?" 

_"I have."_ He repeats, sharp and fast.

He doesn't expect a hand to grab his forearm, wrenching it across the space, dragging him forwards. He expects the crunch of breaking bones, he's almost disappointed when it never comes. 

"This is getting worse." The warden shakes his arm, frustration clear, "it's almost to your damn elbow. It's on your face and your ears." The warden looks down at his tail where it's still tied to the side of his leg, "and look at that, the rot's there too. So, do you want to try that again?" 

Dream feels his ears set back.

He doesn't have to look down to see the way the withering rot has crept up towards his elbow, disappearing beneath rolled up sleeves.

"You've been wasting too much energy on not starving-"

Dream scoffs, wrenching his arm out of the warden's grip before scraping himself off the ground, "Take the cuffs off then."

"You know I'm not going to do that."

"Then bring- at least put the books and the clock back." 

"Also out of the question." The warden stands, dusting off the plates of his armor with the back of his hand, unconcerned. Resting a palm on the hilt of Warden's Will. 

"Then I guess-" Dream shrugs, turning his back to the warden against his better judgement, "I guess you're out of luck. You lose your prisoner, you- you lose the book. Death will be permanent. Are you… Are you really willing to risk that?" 

"You're not in a position to negotiate."

"Arent I?" Dream turns, frame shaking with a mounting chill as he scrubs the back of a wrist over his brow.

The warden doesn't rise to the bait, opting to change the subject and leave him with a doomed understanding that the book itself is only so much a bargaining chip as his own ability to recall everything that's in it. Which is to say it's unreliable at best.

"If it's the fact it's potatoes I can get something else-" The warden sounds mildly annoyed, tone overflowing with the desire to be anywhere else, "it'll have to be just as tough and bland, this is punishment. Not vacation."

"It's not-" He breathes heavily, the air rattling in his chest, "it's not about the potatoes- it's- they're poisoned. You know it's-" and he realizes how it sounds, voice growing thin, "you know it is."

"Poisoned?" The warden raises a brow, "I'm not- why would I poison you? Do you even hear yourself?" 

The warden's doing that voice. That condescending drawl, and hell, Dream knows it well, he weaponized it. To hear it thrown around at his own expense is nothing short of an insult.

"I'm not fucking stupid," Dream growls.

"No, you're not." The warden's eyes glint, chin tilted up slightly, "So you see why that sounds insane, right?"

"It's not- I'm not insane." He says it with a shaky sort of anger, a confidence that wavers because he's choking air down too fast. It's like his heart can't seem to beat fast enough to keep up, sluggish and defeated by a crippling lack of calories and the room starts to wobble. 

He knows it's worse if he eats. It always is.

It takes only a few miserable steps to get to the wall, hand braced against it as he wills the room to stop spinning. The timing couldn't be worse, the nauseous shock of a dipping blood pressure leaves his arm crumpling, shoulder braced against the obsidian that is too cold, too wrong. 

Because the world keeps tilting to the right, over and over until his eyes follow the sinking sensation, and his head is almost too heavy to hold up.

"I'm not-" He slips into mumbling Ender, temple pressed against the stone.

And all that adrenaline, all that defiance is short-lived, the crash worse than the start because he is starving, he has been for long enough that its toll is more than just shaking hands.

He knows the effects in passing, can list them off because he's seen them kill. 

Impossibly slow heart rate, a fainting, feeble, weakness; and despite every ounce of rage he's still in the same boat as every living thing that relies on something as precarious as scarfing down food just to survive.

Held up to the flames of a twisted mortality and left to dangle over them, he's demanded to change. 

For a split second he heeds the warden's words more than his own, believing that perhaps he is wrong, perhaps he's just-

"You've got a fever."

A palm brushes over his forehead, sticky and uncomfortable. He flinches at the sudden touch, tense with a snarl on his lips before it trades swiftly for a rumbling sense of content. He mumbles something nonsensical in reply, forgoing everything just to sag against the cool relief of the warden's palm just a bit more. 

The hand retreats and it's like clarity is spilled back into his feverish skull. He tries to step back, but the warden catches his wrist in a strong grip and he nearly throws a rabid punch.

"Here." The warden presses a glass bottle into his hand before letting go. It's more dehumanizing than kind, the warden moving back similar to how one affords a skittish animal their little corner to hiss and spit in.

"It's-" For the first time the warden stumbles on his words, "it's not much, but at least it'll bring that down."

Whatever the potion is, it's shockingly cold, relief shaped in the way the glass sweats against his palm under the intense heat and he considers pressing it to the side of his neck in his delirium.

It's all an insulting mercy, some pitiful act and he glares, eyes catching the light in a way that turns his stomach. Stabbing a violent spear through the back of his skull in the same path as the steel needle to a lobotomy. He's forced to lower his gaze.

"So what, you take care of me now? I'm like your- your little pet?"

The warden glowers. "No, it's just medicine. Try to be a little grateful."

Dream leans against the wall and turns the bottle in his hand. The bright viscous liquid inside clings to the sides as it turns. It might as well glow a dark toxic red for how much he doesn't know what the hell it is, and yet in the same breath he thinks he's seen it before. It's a dangerous sort of déjà vu. 

The warden seems to catch on to the hesitation, "I can always force it down your throat." 

And there it is.

"What does it do?" He doesn't hide his scowl when he asks.

"It's just healing, mixed with some regen and mint."

The warden says it like he's rehearsed the answer. 

Dream mulls over the idea that he's asked it before, considers the possibility that they've stood in some scenario just like this, some other reason driving the warden to press the potion into his palm. Maybe he wasn't even given that courtesy.

Agitation gnaws at his fingertips until they're static.

"Yeah." Dream smiles wryly, curling his fingers tighter around the neck of the bottle. "We both know that's a lie."

The warden's fingers curl around the hilt of Warden's Will.

The small act makes his skin light up, a hot prickling sensation that rests under his chin and chokes him with the vice grip of a trained sort of fear. 

He wrenches the cork out of the glass and kicks it back with a feral sort of self-dignity. The instant it hits his tongue he sees bright flashes of jagged memories, things that puncture his psyche only to remind him what it feels like to have hands force his jaw open, pour it down his throat and hold a palm over his mouth until he's forced to choke it down. 

It's the same sickly sweet taste that lingers in the starch of the potatoes. 

Gasping and sputtering, instinct tries to convince him to spit it out but it's too late and he bares his teeth in a smile that borders on a hiss.

Swiping a wrist over the back of his mouth, he casts the empty bottle at the warden's boots as hard as he can.

He's disappointed when it doesn't shatter loud enough and he watches the warden kick at the largest shards of glass entirely unamused, like he'd just witnessed a dog piss on his favorite rug.

For a stretch of time he sits against the wall and glares at the warden's boots. Nothing happens. 

But slowly, subtly, his eyes start to fall half shut, vision warping at the edges until it creeps to the center and the warden's visage of green and gold doubles. 

His mouth goes so dry his tongue becomes scratchy cotton and he slowly angles his head to stare at the water basin. Watching it shift and shudder in his sight, he licks his lips and wonders if he can somehow chase away enough of that numbness to crawl across the cell. 

Thinking grows into a momentous task soon after that. An airy, fleeting sense of self has him scrunching his brow and pushing a heavy palm against the side of his head until confusion drives him to forget the limb is even his. In the wake of it, he spends a considerable staring down at his own palm where it had slipped down the side of his face and fallen into his lap. 

He flexes his hand and watches the fingers curl in. He does it again because he doesn't remember why he can't feel them. He does it _again_ because he doesn't remember why he can't-

He lists to the side, catching himself with a stuttered laugh. 

"Hey, hey- stay with me now." 

Someone pushes him until he's sitting upright. 

More laughter bubbles up between breaths and suddenly the wobble of the cell is endlessly amusing. 

A hand taps the side of his face, keeping his eyes from slipping closed.

"Need you to stay awake for a bit-"

Slurring protests, he's annoyed at it for keeping him from sinking into that fuzzy mess of nothing.

"I need you to remember something for me, okay?" 

Everything is warm and pleasant. He thinks he likes the sound of the warden's voice. Smiling weakly he tries to keep his eyes centered on the warden's face but it's always jumping and dripping, shaking apart before buzzing right back together. 

He gives a nod.

"The food is fine. Everything is fine."

That's not true, he barely thinks the thought before it cracks apart and he draws in a shaky breath. 

"Everything is fine." He repeats and the warden smiles back.

"Good." The voice grows distant, muffled like it's underwater, "Now, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to tell me where you have Schlatt's book."

Red, he sees it flash across his vision and knows he should bite his tongue.

"I-" He feels his mouth move, but the rest is black.

\--

"Dream." 

Dream blinks, lurching forward like he's been shocked he grabs at the space above his sternum. Fingers twisting in the fabric his heart thuds out its familiar tune. He's- he… he can't remember, he'd just been standing hadn't he?

"Do you feel better?" 

Right... The warden's words chase away the immediate unease and he casts his gaze to where he expects to see shattered glass. Nothing's there. 

He scrubs a hand down his face before bringing it back up to set against his brow, propping an elbow on his knee. It's all floaty and jumbled, twisted into a facsimile of some brief stretch of time he thinks he's missing, but he's not entirely sure of.

"Yeah…" Dream starts, voice rough, the words feeling as if they've been chosen for him, "I- everything's fine."

He pulls his head out of his hand and looks up. The warden smiles and he finds himself copying it, not really sure why. Not understanding that the nicety is a formality that should turn his stomach and freeze his blood. 

The warden offers a hand and Dream takes it, the whole exchange rubbing him the wrong way as he's pulled to his feet. It's some pale reconstruction of a past, a shell of an old friendship that's too broken to ever glue back together. At least not properly. 

"Tommy said he wanted to visit one last time. For closure." The warden dusts a hand across Dream's shoulder, cleaning off some imaginary speck of dust or maybe it's just to test something. "I might let him if you behave."

A hand grabs his wrist then and Dream doesn't fight it. Not even when the warden turns the appendage palm up and places a potato into the center of it, forcing his fingers to curl around it.

He stares down at the root vegetable, not thinking anything of it when he digs his teeth in like he's biting through an apple because he's fucking starving. It tastes of nothing but dirt, cardboard, and something cloyingly sweet. It might as well be ambrosia for the ichor it puts into his veins.

When he meets the warden's eyes again he sees a quirk to his lips that's almost satisfied. It disappears a moment later.

"When's To-" Dream stutters over the name, trying to remember it exactly, "when's _Tommy_ supposed to visit?"

"About a week." The warden turns to leave before the last word can fully hit the air.

Dream watches him go, eyes tracking every step, every action, every mechanism that's engaged, every part of the process that goes into leaving that he knows so well, but never aids him in getting out. 

It's such a grim notion that when the lava cuts off the world again, he realizes he wanted the warden to stay. Like he's just some mangy dog always waiting for its owner to storm back in and kick a boot straight into its side.

He hates the vile nature of it, detesting it to the utmost degree as he lets himself slide back down the wall to sit and wait. Gnawing on a meal of raw potatoes that sits far too heavy in his stomach as he mulls over the thought that he has a week and no way to track the time.

He has a week to remember who the hell Tommy is.


End file.
